PCEHR+-+infosheet1

** eHealth Site Grants – where to from here? - **
 * Personally Controlled - EHR **

Australia is to have a shared electronic health record supporting individual patient healthcare from July 2012. Can this be achieved after a decade of experimenting with local, hand crafted solutions. Australia needs to adopt an open, mature, proven and practical standards based approach to the PC EHR? DoHA and NEHTA have jointly issued an invitation for lead organisations to apply for funding to become initial implementation sites for the PCEHR ([|www.health.gov.au/tenders] ) by December 23rd. The project has 3 stages:

** Are you a potential PCEHR Site? **  Based on international experience the PCEHR will adopt a regional approach where healthcare organisations collaborate to establish an IT infrastructure for sharing key health information based on existing documentation such as discharge summaries and test results. Each healthcare group provides some information and uses some information – this model is known as a **Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE)**. These regions, working with consumers, agree locally about what can be shared, governance, a self sustaining business model, and engagement of technology vendors to deliver the solution (based on nationally agreed standards). Regions will “interoperate” in a federated model to create a “single person view”. ** How might this play out in Australia? **  DoHA is spending $55m of the $466m allocated to this program to establish sites covering 30% of Australia to field test a model of delivery, standards, and sustainability model that has not yet been released for public discussion. It would be reasonable to guess that there will be around 15 lead sites – spread across each state and territory. Australians will be able to enrol in the PCEHR by July 2012, however there is no guarantee by DoHA that there will be national coverage by that stage. The allocation of the remaining $400m for this program has not been announced. ** What role will health IT vendors play? ** Vendors of current systems will need to incorporate the capacity to be a source and consumer of information for the PCEHR. NEHTA has called for GP vendor systems to gather to address this issue. Vendors will also be needed to deliver the infrastructure across some 45 regions. Internationally health IT vendors have already implemented a standard profile to deliver a PCEHR like system across many countries: **IHE Cross Enterprise Document Share (XDS)**. This profile has also been demonstrated for the last 5 years by local vendors at the annual HISA Interoperability Showcase.
 * ** Phase 1 ** ($100k max) – planning and approval
 * ** Phase 2 ** Delivery of a working solution by July 2012
 * ** Phase 3 ** Post project: commitment to self sustaining operation

For more information on the IHE approach to the PCEHR, XDS and Australian vendors who have already implemented it: http://ihe-australia.wikispaces.com/PCEHR

To view a map of IHE XDS installations in US, Europe and China [|Where is the world is XDS.]

** What and who are IHE - Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise? **  Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) is an open, not for profit, international membership based organisation building on standards to deliver solutions to many of healthcare’s information management problems. IHE’s members are healthcare organisations, clinicians, consumers, vendors, standards groups and government agencies.; we are a broad group committed to pragmatic, usable solutions that can be delivered now. With the funds on offer, the capability of the vendors, existing standards and profiles and buy-in from consumers, there is no reason why Australia should not have a fully functional PC EHR for everyone by end of 2012. IHE has a toolkit of interoperability profiles and conformance testing to enable local, regional and national groups deliver the first stages of a shared EHR, and the next generation health messaging, referral, radiology image and care coordination platform – all on one open platform, that involves multiple existing vendor solutions! This approach is called Cross Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS). IHE profiles are being used to rollout the national Health Information Exchange Program in the USA and many parts of Europe. ** What role will consumers play in their PCEHR? ** **// “Consumers and service providers can see that are many suppliers of ehealth implementation technologies. These can be both competitive and complementary to each other. All naturally think they have the best idea. There is probably no one best idea within this very complex environment. This situation is unlikely to be ever resolved except within a viable market, based on standards to enable efficient interconnectivity and interoperability." //**  **// Peter Brown, Consumers eHealth Alliance //**    The name selected “Personally Controlled EHR”, provides a visible assurance that the existing rules about patient consent for exchange of healthcare information between healthcare professionals will not change. The IHE XDS model is extremely flexible and supports different models of healthcare exchange including the use of personal health records, patient access to their health information and the audit trial of those who have accessed it. Consumers will also be concerned that the PC EHR system works reliably, is secure, and will provide fail safe protection of their information. Consumer groups such as the newly formed CeHA will need to take the lead on educating and representing consumers in the discussions on the PCEHR ** Where to from here? ** DoHA and NEHTA have set some challenging timelines for the healthcare industry around the PCEHR. IHE Australia is taking the following steps to support this initiative:  ** Next Steps: ** ** 1. ****Teleconference for candidate PCEHR site leaders 12 noon. Tuesday 7th December** ** 2. ****Teleconference for Health IT system vendors** **at 5pm Tuesday 7th December -** ** 3. ****Information clearing house and discussion paper for candidate PCEHR sites** ** 4. ****Scenario case histories from the 2010 HIC Interoperability Showcase describing an IHE XDS approach to the PC-EHR**   **Download details from:** http://ihe-australia.wikispaces.com/PCEHR **Further information**: Bernie Crowe IHE Australia Events Manager eventsmanager@ihe.net.au 0418487081
 * Establishment of a wiki to act as a clearing house of resources to support organisations who are considering becoming PCEHR sites and vendors who wish to be involved
 * Identification of qualified vendors who can apply IHE profiles to address local solutions
 * <span style="font-size: 11pt; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 3em; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Consideration of partnering or providing professional assistance to potential consortia bids