The Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) is pleased to announce the release of an industry offer that will financially incentivise software providers to implement new standards for enhanced secure messaging functionality in their products.
The details of the industry offer are available at: https://developer.digitalhealth.gov.au/resources/articles/secure-messaging-industry-offer
I invite you to consider whether your organisation would like to participate in this industry offer. If so, you must submit an Expression of Interest, using the template included in the offer documentation, to [email protected].
The deadline for submitting Expressions of Interest has been extended from 5pm AEST Wednesday 17 April 2019 to 10am AEST Tuesday 23 April 2019.
To assist prospective participants in determining whether they wish to submit an Expression of Interest, an industry briefing webinar was held at 2:00pm AEDT on Thursday 4 April 2019. In that webinar key aspects of the industry offer were described along with the development work involved. The slide pack is available at: https://developer.digitalhealth.gov.au/sites/default/files/secure-messaging-industry-offer-webinar-final-110419.pdf
Background
One of the goals of the Australian National Digital Health Strategy is to eliminate clinicians’ dependence on paper-based correspondence by 2022, and secure messaging is central to achieving this. The Agency has been working closely with software providers and the clinical community to address a lack of interoperability between different secure messaging software products, which has created challenges for clinical end-users and inhibited the adoption of secure messaging in Australia.
A Technical Working Group, established by the Agency and comprising representatives of software providers and other government bodies, has reached agreement on technical standards for looking up provider addresses using a federated provider directory model, and on which message formats will be supported. These standards were successfully trialled in two proof-of-concept projects in 2018. In light of this success, the Agency wishes to speed up the uptake by providing developers of clinical information systems and secure messaging systems with a financial incentive to deliver the enhanced functionality in an accelerated timeframe.
If you have any questions about this industry offer, please send them by email to [email protected] or contact the Agency’s Help Desk on 1300 901 001.
We look forward to continuing to work with the healthcare software community to enhance the interoperability of secure messaging solutions in Australia.
Bettina McMahon
Chief Operating Officer
Australian Digital Health Agency
Support
For information on Product Capabilities, Provider Directory Service & Message Payload, Single National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) and Software Validation Process refer to:
https://developer.digitalhealth.gov.au/resources/articles/secure-messaging
We value your feedback and encourage questions, comments or suggestions about our products. Please email [email protected] or call 1300 901 001.
