At 7:17 am +1000 1/9/06, Tim Churches wrote:
Ian Cheong wrote:
I presume this merry go round will continue until something definitive
happens and some proper standards are legislated.
Ian,
I would have thought that you might have said that this merry go round
will continue until the IT-014 committees and working groups of
Standards Australia extracts their collective digits and develops,
circulates and then promulgates an Australian standards for
interoperable, cross-platform, non-proprietary secure health messaging.
Had the IT-014 bunch devoted some time and energy to developing secure
health messaging transport standards, instead of just concentrating
exclusively on the HL7 content of those messages without regard as to
how they were to be transmitted, we'd be in better shape today and not
suffer the ridiculous balkanisation which currently exists. Indeed, if
you look at the terms of reference in Attachment 1 of the March 2001
work plan of the IT-14-6-3 HL7 working group at
https://committees.standards.org.au/COMMITTEES/IT-014-06-03/TOR/IT-014-06-03-TERMS.HTM
it says:
"Vision:
· To develop a national approach to the implementation of the Health
Level Seven (HL7) protocol in Australia.
· To significantly reduce the cost and time to implement systems that
use the HL7 protocol.
Mission:
· Create HL7 standards that are consistently implementable in Australia
with localisation where req.
· Effect change to HL7 int. as required by Australian needs."
Surely that includes consideration of HOW messages are to be
transmitted, not just WHAT the messages ought to contain?
Am I being unfair or overly harsh in this criticism? It is easy to point
these things out looking through the retrospectoscope, but I dare say
that the looming secure health messaging mess as on the radar back in
2001 for anyone who cared to look. Opinions?
Tim C
The historical record shows ... important
national discussions were held about the need for
secure communications standards in 2004. The
relevant committee was IT-014-04.
https://committees.standards.org.au/COMMITTEES/IT-014/MEETINGREPORTS/J0039/IT-014-PUBLIC-PUBLICMEETINGREPORT-MTG-039.HTM
see document:
https://committees.standards.org.au/COMMITTEES/IT-014/MEETINGREPORTS/J0039/Panel%20discussion%20Secure%20Electronic%20Communications.rtf
Work was initiated, but NeHTA was doing a
consultancy in the area at the time .... so
nothing much happened quickly pending the outcome
of the NeHTA consultancy. I have never seen a
report from that consultancy. I think it was
buried. Another consultancy emerged in its place
I believe.
In the meantime, MediConnect/HealthConnect were
implementing projects using secure
communications. But those methods seem to have
ended up in the dust.
The GPCG interoperability project created a small
code base to make secure interfaces work to
deliver data. Ask Horst what we ended up with.
NeHTA still has secure communications on its agenda.
But nothing will happen until a public statement
is made and it has legislative force. And I have
seen no guts to deliver legislative force.
And general practice no longer has a unified
voice in this space. And there does not appear
much interest in that either. And pockets on
uncoordinated activity are the best that is
happening presently. Oliver's is a great example.
ADGP has money to do IT.
Ian.
--
Dr Ian R Cheong, BMedSc, FRACGP, GradDipCompSc, MBA(Exec)
Health Informatics Consultant, Brisbane, Australia
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(for urgent matters, please send a copy to my
practice email as well:
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
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