Medtech has been working closely with the National eHealth Transition Authority (NeHTA) to develop the Release 1 eHealth functionality, which will be available in Medtech32 version 8.1.0.

These capabilities comprise the following Healthcare Identifiers and receipt of CDA discharge summaries and specialist letters.

• Medicare has assigned an Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI) to every Australian resident, and each Healthcare Provider, individual or organization, will be assigned a Healthcare Provider Identifier - HPI-I or HPI-O respectively.

The IHI will be used in clinical documents to identify the patient, while providers such as senders, recipients, and the patient’s usual GP will be identified by HPI-Is and HPI-Os.

NeHTA’s secure messaging standard will allow a clinical document to be sent securely to any clinician in Australia; given the HPI-I and HPI-O.

• Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) is an established international standard for exchanging clinical information. It will enable healthcare providers to exchange information electronically with other clinicians, no matter which clinical software they are using - but assuming both clinicians are using software written by a member of NeHTA’s GP Desktop Vendor’s Panel.

If you need to send a document to a clinician whose software doesn’t comply with CDA, you can still use the older forms of communication. The first rollout of the eHealth capabilities will be to a group of early adopters called ‘Wave 1 eHealth sites’. Following the successful implementation and testing, these capabilities will be available to all Medtech customers.

Medtech is now working with NeHTA to complete the Release 2 capabilities before the end of this year, including the creation of CDA eReferrals, Shared Health Summaries, and also NeHTA Secure Messaging.

We feel honoured that NeHTA have selected us, ahead of other companies, to be part of the panel.