eHealth sites

The Australian Government has allocated $78 million (GST exclusive) to establish and operate lead eHealth sites from the $465.7 million (GST exclusive) funding allocated for the personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) system.

The lead eHealth sites will be used to deploy elements of eHealth infrastructure and standards in controlled, real world healthcare settings to inform future national rollout and adoption of the PCEHR.

There are 12 eHealth sites that have been set up to test different elements of the PCEHR system in practical settings. This will allow the Australian Government to be confident that the different components of the system work as intended. The eHealth sites have been set up to implement and evaluate e-health infrastructure and standards in real-life settings. These lead eHealth sites are:

• Hunter Urban Medicare Local (formerly Hunter Urban Division of General Practice)
• Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local (formerly GP Partners Ltd (Brisbane))
• Inner East Melbourne Medicare Local (formerly Melbourne East General Practice Ltd.)
• Brisbane South Division Limited;
• Mater Misericordiae (Brisbane)
• The Greater Western Sydney eHealth Consortium (NSW Department of Health);
• The North-West Area Health Service Project (Cradle Coast)(TAS),
• St Vincent’s and Mater Health Sydney Project;
• FRED IT Group MedView Project (VIC);
• St Vincent’s and Mater Health Sydney Project
• the Northern Territory Department of Health and Families; and
• Calvary Healthcare Project (ACT)

The lead eHealth sites will target priority consumer groups, including mothers and babies (Mater Brisbane), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Northern Territory), people with chronic and complex conditions (Medibank Private), children (Brisbane South), people with disabilities (Greater Western Sydney) and the aged (Cradle Coast).

The Hunter Urban, Metro North Brisbane, Brisbane South Division and Inner East Melbourne sites are taking a community-based approach to trialling the implementation of healthcare identifiers, shared health summaries, discharge summaries and referral/specialist letters.

The operational management of the eHealth site program is being undertaken by the National eHealth Transition Authority (NEHTA) under contract to the Department. In addition, the twelve sites are working collectively with the Department to ensure strategic health policy alignment, leverage off complementary national infrastructure and toolsets, adherence with national equity and access principles and communication program synergies.