Context & background
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), responsible for the roll out of My Health Record – a secure, online summary of an individuals key healthcare information, accessible by the individual and healthcare providers whenever they need it – have partnered with the Victorian Department of Health (DoH) to work with hospitals in Victoria to integrate specialist letters with My Health Record, expanding the key healthcare information available in My Health Record.
As this joint initiative was mobilised, partner hospitals of iMedX enquired whether the iMedX solution provided the possibility of integration of their specialist letters with My Health Record.
iMedX is the leading clinical documentation provider in Victoria, through our clinical documentation platform, eScription One (eSOne), we provide solutions that support the documentation and delivery of outpatient specialist letters. iMedX was best placed to support this work with the Victorian hospitals.
Mercy Hospital for Women and Peninsula Health joined the project as pilot sites to co-design, test and refine the solution in a live environment. This piece of work required excellent collaboration between all stakeholders, working with the requirements of the hospitals and My Health Record and, the availability of existing technology and workflow structures.
Objectives
Delivery of this initiative brought together key stakeholders – iMedX and the two pilot sites. The objectives of the project group were identified as:
- Successful integration of approved specialists’ letters with My Health Record.
- Implementing My Health Record integration into the current iMedX-enabled clinical documentation workflow within the hospitals, ensuring no disruptions to the workflow.
- Alignment to the interoperability roadmap as defined in the document published by ADHA, Connecting Australian Healthcare: National Healthcare Interoperability Plan – improving interoperability between clinical documentation capture and availability of the document within the My Health Record.
- ADHA define a requirement that all documentation in My Health Record must be uploaded from a healthcare provider. Therefore, iMedX set out to ensure that documents are integrated directly from the hospital without extra burden on hospital resources.
Approach
The project ran over a 9-month period, with official go-live achieved at both pilot sites by 22 November 2023.
The approach taken aligned closely with the implementation approach iMedX follows in technical integrations of this nature. This included:
- Project team mobilisation including onboarding of the two pilot sites, Mercy Hospital for Women and Peninsula Health.
- A technical discovery period was undertaken including a review of the technical specifications. As iMedX has a long-standing partnership with both pilot sites, our understanding of the technical landscape at both sites was drawn upon at this stage.
- From the findings of technical discovery, a prototype was built that had the capability to deliver approved specialist letters to My Health Record from the hospital environment.
- Rigorous testing, redefining, and recreating the solution was conducted over a 3-month period.
- Sign off from both hospitals on User Acceptance Testing was achieved to enable go-live planning.
- iMedX worked with each site to determine their preferred approach to go-live.
Outcomes
The overarching outcome achieved through this project is the implementation of a solution that is improving patient care through greater interoperability.
The project achieved successful go live at two pilot sites:
- The Mercy Hospital for Women went live with full deployment, meaning all approved specialist letters are made available in My Health Record.
- Peninsula health went live with a phased deployment, meaning the integration will be activated one department at a time, over time.
Successful go-live in this project means, at point of completion, the specialist letter can be provided to the hospital’s medical record, as well as the approved document can be sent to My Health Record, without disrupting current clinical documentation processes.
The outcomes of the project have provided validation of the limited disruption to current clinical documentation processes whilst improving interoperability of clinical documentation capture to My Health Record. This will support the continuous roll out across hospitals in Victoria and Australia.
Here’s what Mercy Hospital for Women have to say about their experience:
“iMedx were a receptive and competent partner to work with on this important project. Their solution allows the automated upload of Specialist Clinic letters using the IMedX transcription service to the patient’s My Health Record without disruption to our current workflows. Importantly it provides medical staff with an option to remove any documents deemed of a sensitive nature from upload by simply starting during a dictation ‘Do not upload to My Health Record’
Access to health information contained in the My Health Record can help reduce the instance of adverse medication events (including hospital re-admissions), decrease duplicate diagnostic testing and improve continuity of care for patients across the primary and secondary care sectors.
Mercy Health already uploads CPF Discharge Summaries, pathology and imaging results to My Health Record. The addition of Specialist Clinic letters will help My Health Record become an even more valuable tool for patients’ health care providers.” – Julie Brophy, Director Health Information Services, Mercy Health Services