ADHA aims to encourage paperless health care

The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) will offer healthcare software companies a financial incentive to deliver interoperable secure messaging functionality into their systems by 2020 to help eliminate paper-based messaging in health care.

The agency has reached an agreement to provide $30,000 to software vendors to integrate new standards into their existing clinical information and secure messaging systems.

A lack of interoperability between secure messaging platforms used by various healthcare providers is often requiring providers to resort to the use of unreliable fax machines or mail to share information.

ADHA, the medical software industry and the Australian clinical community mutually agreed on new interoperability standards for secure messaging platforms last year. The new initiative is aimed at accelerating the adoption of these standards across Australia.

Financial incentives will be available to all private vendors that currently operate a clinical information or secure messaging system in at least two different sites. The $30,000 available under the offer applies to each relevant software package offered by a vendor.

“Providing patient care in collaboration with other clinicians requires the safe and timely sharing of their health information. The inability of healthcare providers to share information quickly can lead to communication breakdowns, which can contribute to poor health outcomes and unnecessary duplication of care,” ADHA Chief Medical Adviser Clinical Professor Meredith Makeham said.

“This is a significant step toward ensuring healthcare providers can use the tools they already have to send information to their patients and other clinicians providing those patients care, and in turn provide safer and more comprehensive care.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Henri Schmit

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