Conformance Services end of year availability
The Agency would like to advise all vendors of the availability of its conformance services, including conformance assessments and support, throughout the end of year holiday period and Agency office closure.
Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service bookings
HI Service conformance assessment bookings for 2024 have now concluded. Bookings are now being taken for conformance assessments in 2025, with availability from 13 January 2025. Preparatory documentation, such as Implementation Conformance Statements, may continue to be submitted through this period as required.
Electronic Prescribing (EP) and eNRMC assessments
EP and eNRMC conformance assessments will continue to be processed until 20 December 2024 and will resume on 13 January 2025. Throughout December and January, EP and eNRMC conformance assessments may be subject to processing delays of up to 10 business days due to the end of year office closure. Vendors are requested to consider appropriate additional lead time in product delivery planning, to account for any delays.
We thank you for your understanding and look forward to continuing to support your conformance activities in the new year. Please contact us at [email protected] should you require any further assistance.
The Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) is a national system for uniquely identifying individuals, healthcare provider individuals and healthcare provider organisations. Healthcare Identifiers allow us to have confidence that the correct information is associated with the correct individual at the point of care.
The HI Service is required for many aspects of Digital Health including Electronic Prescribing, Secure Messaging or My Health Record. Get started below.
Overview
Before building digital health functionality (such as electronic prescribing, secure messaging or My Health Record) your software must first be able to identify the three participants in a healthcare event; the patient, the healthcare provider individual, and the healthcare provider organisation. The HI Service stores identifiers for these three participants. The HI Service Business to Business (B2B) Gateway exposes SOAP based web services which allow your software to search for identifiers for these parties.
The HI Service consists of 3 types of identifiers;
- Individual Healthcare Identifier (IHI), assigned to healthcare consumers. Every Australian with a Medicare Card or Department of Veteran’s Affairs (DVA) card is automatically assigned an IHI. Consumers who aren’t eligible for Medicare or DVA can apply for an IHI using the IHI service in myGov.
- Healthcare Provider Identifier–Individual - (HPI-I), assigned to healthcare providers such as GPs, pharmacist, nurse or psychiatrists. Every healthcare provider registered with AHPRA is automatically assigned an HPI-I. Healthcare providers who aren’t AHPRA registered may be eligible to apply for an HPI-I.
- Healthcare Provider Identifier–Organisation (HPI-O), assigned to organisations such as general practices, pharmacies and hospitals. Healthcare provider organisations must register for an HPI-O.
If you are new to the HI Service and wish to register and begin development then please follow our developer guides below. If you would like to understand more about the Test and Go Live process then please view our overview here: HI Service - Test and Go Live
Developer Guides
Refer below to access all Developer Guides including:
- HI Service - Registration and Certificates
- HI Service - IHI Lookup
- HI Service - IHI Lookup - Test Cases
- HI Service - Search for HPI-I
- HI Service - Additional requirements for Electronic Prescribing
- HI Service - Test and Go Live
If you are connecting your software to the My Health Record system then you may wish to follow our combined developer guides here:
Healthcare Identifiers Integration Toolkit
The HI Integration Toolkit is a collection of sample code available in both .NET and Java. This toolkit is available for download via this website, GitHub and NuGet. If you are following the HI Service Developer Guides, you will be provided direction to download the .NET NuGet package in Guide 1. The Healthcare Identifiers Integration Toolkit contains libraries for B2B connectivity to the Healthcare Identifiers service, used to search for IHI, HPI-Is and HPI-Os. For more information refer to:
Sample Code available from GitHub
Java based sample code equivalent to the dotnet code base. We are working on providing updates to the 'clinical-document-library' for existing and new CDA document types. Other clients are deemed sufficient as there have been no API changes.
Related content
Conformance Services end of year availability
The Agency would like to advise all vendors of the availability of its conformance services, including conformance assessments and support, throughout the end of year holiday period and Agency office closure.
Getting started education modules
If you are interested in integrating your software with the My Health Record system, we recommend starting by reviewing our education modules.
HI Service conformance profile update – invitation to information session
The Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service Conformance Profile provides requirements for software developers who want to integrate with the HI Service. We are planning to update the conformance profile and invite you to an information session on Tuesday 26 November at 2pm (AEDT) to explain the proposed changes. This will be followed by a four-week feedback period.
Services Australia advice: SHA-2 OCA renewal release & HI Service licensed material updates
On 1 June 2024, the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service enhanced the functionality of Search IHI and Update IHI web services.
Developer guides
HI Service - Registration and Certificates
In this guide, you will Register as a developer for the HI Service, Request Test Certificates and Test Environment Data, Install the Test Certificates locally, Import Certificates in CIS Software.
HI Service - IHI Lookup
Your software will need to conduct lookups for Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHIs) for patients.
HI Service - IHI Lookup - Test Cases
After successfully executing the IHI Lookup, it is important to modify your implementation to meet the Test Cases for the Use Cases we have built to UC.010 and UC.015.
HI Service - Search for HPI-I
It is highly recommended that your software conduct HPI-I searches for users of your system.
HI Service - Additional requirements for Electronic Prescribing
This guide will discuss potential changes which are required in your software.
HI Service - Test and Go Live
All products developed, or updated, to connect with the Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI) Service are required to undergo testing before production access is granted.
HI Service - FAQs
The following frequently asked questions relate to the use of Healthcare Identifiers in Health Software Systems.
Open Source Sample Code Directory - GitHub and NuGet
The Agency provides sample code directly on GitHub, NuGet, and Maven.
NASH SHA-2 Certificates - Developer Guide
This Developer Guide is for the use of developers whose products connect to the Healthcare Identifiers (HI) Service, My Health Record, Electronic Prescribing and Secure Messaging with a National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) PKI Certificate.
Electronic Prescribing Sunset Dates for Conformance Profiles
The Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) has published a series of Electronic Prescribing (EP) Conformance Profiles (CP) with incremental increases in functionality.
What are the test endpoints?
HI Service and My Health Record test endpoint access information: