The Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI) is a national system for uniquely identifying individuals and healthcare providers. HIs help to ensure individuals and providers can have confidence that the correct information is associated with the correct individual at the point of care.
Healthcare Identifiers Service in the Australian context
HIs help healthcare providers to ensure they store information against the correct person and securely access patient information in the My Health Record system. Combined with NASH, this allows consumers to securely keep track of their medical history in My Health Record.
Context in digital health
One of the key records shared in My Health Record is an individual’s shared health summary. It is a clinical document sourced from the individual’s nominated provider, containing key pieces of information about an individual’s health status that is useful to a wide range of healthcare providers for delivery of care.
Shared health summaries are a key piece of information for populating an individual’s consolidated view but it must be supplied as a structured clinical document.
Figure 1: Overview of Healthcare Identifiers Service
HIs can be used in health related information to clearly identify the patient, the treating health professional and the organisation where healthcare is provided.
HIs are also the foundation for other government initiatives, such as the My Health Record system.
Feature Specifications
Healthcare Identifiers Service - Support Documents v1.4
These documents provide background and guidance for healthcare provider organisations, and conformance, compliance and accreditation requirements for vendors, regarding the Healthcare Identifiers Service.