Andrew, Chris Lynton-Moll Director of AHML is away on holida. On his return I will ask him to clarify where we are with regards to accreditation, I am equally sure that my earlier statement is correct. Until that is clarified I suggest we drop it.
You say that we are not successful with our approach whereas I would point out that what we are doing all over Australia is highly successful, in some cases we have entire state health departments and their hospitals are delivering REF messages to hundreds of general practices. In other cases we have groups of providers REF messaging consistently and on a significant scale. I acknowledge that getting the vendors up to speed has been hard, but the results are showing through; it is a case of taking the tortoise's approach rather than the hare's. As I commented in a posting yesterday, in New Zealand we exchange more than 250,000 REF messages per month and this stunningly successful system (recognised by international commentators as the world's best*) is growing 60% annually year on year. *(City University, London 2006 study of primary care IT in ten countries and the Schoen report- Commonwealth Fund study of eight countries also 2006 - URLs available on request.) Your comment re our intention to create a monopoly is unfair and inflammatory as it is we that have provided a draft NEHTA compliant interconnection framework for message providers to consider and with AHML's help a Draft messaging providers' Code of Practice. This is a far more constructive contribution to creating messaging provider interconnection that any other messaging provider has contributed. Finally, for those interested in the essence of the debate, I take issue with your statement that "What we (MO) do now really mirrors what the pathology labs do now, they have extensive interface engine abilities etc etc" The pathology companies use their messaging engines to transform their internal information into useful outgoing messages (as we recommend they do) whereas what you are attempting to do is (as a third party )transform messages en route. We take the view that each entity; lab, GP, hospital etc should get the messages right before they are handed to a third party (messaging) system. This encourages the sender (and their EMR application providers) to ensure they have gotten the outgoing messages right, in turn creating the appropriate demarcation and definition of responsibility amongst the parties, the same applies with acknowledgements which in each case should be created by the recipient system and not by the party in the middle. Summary: Originating system creates message to specification - messaging system checks structure and sends message - recipient system processes and stores message, creates acknowledgement and sends back to Originating system. (No intermediate transformation of messages or creation of acknowledgements is necessary). Anyway, feedback I have received is that a greater understanding of this issue would be very useful to others, but only if the dialogue remains relatively objective and this does not become a forum for hurling insults, so please hark my suggestion that we do take a more dignified approach to it. I think the issue of "what is an appropriate messaging model to promote for Australia?" is a good one and would invite further comments/questions to take it forward. NB readers can get references to the URL for the draft interconnection model/white paper we have produced from my earlier postings. Kind regards, Tom Bowden CEO HealthLink Tom Bowden <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Chief Executive Tel: +64 9 638 0670 Mobile: +64 21 874 154 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Web: www.healthlink.net <http://www.healthlink.net/> <http://www.healthlink.net/> Connecting The Health Sector -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew McIntyre Sent: Wednesday, 9 May 2007 9:51 p.m. To: General Practice Computing Group Talk Subject: Re: [GPCG_TALK] Lets try it from another angle Tom Bowden wrote: > > Andrew, > > I think its time we called a halt to the polemics, or we'll get > ourselves biffed off this list. BTW For the record, HealthLink does > have AHML accreditation for our AS4700.2 - HL7 v2.3 (lab messaging) > validation system and we are currently upgrading that accreditation to > accommodate changes to the lab standard with the move to HL7 v2.4. We > are also working with them on the REF messaging. It needs to be > understood that we do not create messages, we just check them for > structure. So can we let that whole argument drop for now please?? I think letting it drop is the best idea, as you continue to make false claims that you have AHML accreditation for your validation system and AHML assure us that this is not the case. The validation system you have may prevent you from sending your shopping list but that's about it. All this talk of healthlink validating messages is an obstacle in the road to standards based interoperability. As I have asserted what we need is independent accreditation of messages produced and an expectation that systems will reliably import valid messages and deal with them appropriately. A messaging system with a standard open interface would also good protection from monopolistic cartels developing. PMS vendors have an obligation to their customers and in turn to the Customers patients to improve their ability to consume and produce valid messages, Its a quality issue that I cannot believe is left to so much chance. This may not fit well with your vision of an Australian monopoly but the fact remains that the current crop of messages you are delivering are non standards compliant and have serious flaws wrt the escaping of HL7 reserved characters that would concern me greatly. A whole pile of contracts is not going to get us out of this mess, but standards compliance and open interfaces just might. What we do now really mirrors what the pathology labs do now, they have extensive interface engine abilities etc etc and I am yet to here of successful wide scale successes using healthlink for provider to provider messaging. I suggest talking about that rather than attacking other peoples success stories. Andrew McIntyre > > I have given some thought as to how we might debate what I still think > is quite a serious issue in a more dignified manner. I am starting > the ball rolling by outlining the issue a bit more objectively. > Please do feel free to modify what I have written below if you believe > it is factually incorrect or incomplete or if you'd like to add anything. > _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
