At 9:12 am +1000 1/9/06, Tim Churches wrote:
Ian Cheong wrote:
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
It says in the latter document: "MM - interoperability is most
important. IT-014-04 will have as a new work item. " MM is Mark Mynott,
I think.
So did IT-014-04 ever add secure messaging interoperability to its
agenda as a new work item?
Yes.
My point is that if Standards Australia sets itself up as *THE* national
standards setting body in health IT, then it needs to take some
responsibility for creating standards when they are clearly needed, and
some of the blame if such standards are not created in a timely manner.
To be clear, Standards Australia is an organisation of volunteer
committee members. IT-014-04 still I think has secure messaging
interoperability as a work item, but perhaps due to lack of voluntary
resources, progress has not been rapid.
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 2004 the clearly espoused NeHTA line was that "NeHTA is not a
standards setting body" - thus Standards Australia IT-014 cannot blame
NeHTA for Standards Australia's lack of action on secure health message
communications. NeHTA was at that time very clearly looking to Standards
Ausralia IT-014 to produce the standards which it could then annoint.
That boat was well and truly missed, alas.
I think the opposite is true on NeHTA. NeHTA clearly stated on many
occasions that it would take the front running on many domains to
develop specifications to implement, get people to implement them,
then hand over the documentation for "official" standards body
processes. That is still the case.
NeHTA was created to fast track the "slow voluntary resources"
problem to create "traction" in the words of the BCG consultants.
As Ross said, progress has probably been slower.
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.
Failed or canned projects by third parties are not an excuse for
Standards Australia failing to work on secure interoperable health
messaging standards.
NeHTA still has secure communications on its agenda.
Agreed that the ball is no longer in the court of Standards Australia
IT-014, and that (at the risk of mixing sporting metaphors), NeHTa has
the running on this.
If you look at the NeHTA web site, there are some Standards Australia
standards on its standards repository, but by no means all. in the
meantime, the government jurisdictions controlling NeHTA have little
interest in any push to mandate standards.
The main point is still that there is a need for interoperability in
the secure communications space. Whoever has resources to document
the methods should be doing so.
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])
PRIVACY NOTE
I am happy for others to forward on email sent by me to public email lists.
Please ask my permission first if you wish to forward private email
to other parties.
_______________________________________________
Gpcg_talk mailing list
[email protected]
http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
