Expect reforms to the Health Identifiers Act, as well as the imminent rules for the implementation of the Sharing by Default legislation, according to Simon Cleverley.
Digital health enthusiasts have plenty to look forward to over the coming months with a spokesperson for the DoHDA promising that reforms will come thick and fast, including to the national Health Identifiers Act.
Simon Cleverley, assistant secretary for the department’s digital health branch, told delegates at the recent Digital Health Festival in Melbourne that “over the coming weeks and months there will be plenty of reforms deployed”.
“Thanks to the efforts of the last two years, the foundations are now coming together to enable [that],” he said.
First cab off the rank are the rules and details for the implementation of the Sharing by Default legislation.
“In the coming months, we will publicly release the draft legislative rules that will sort out who is required to upload what information, while the detail of these rules will be refined in consultation with stakeholders,” said Mr Cleverley.
He also announced that there will soon be important reforms to the national Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010 – a national system for assigning unique identifiers to individuals, healthcare providers and healthcare provider organisations.
“Building on two reviews of the Act in 2013 and 2018, the department undertook a national consultation in 2023 (here and here) to identify options to modernise the legislation while maintaining patient privacy,” said Mr Cleverley.
“We have now developed a set of pragmatic reforms to this legislation that would seek to improve the legislation, to create an authorisations framework, rather than a permissions framework.”
Related
The reforms would also provide much clearer guidance and more flexibility for users, including directories like the National Health Service Directory operated by Healthdirect, and for new and emerging national digital health capabilities such as e-referrals and e-requests.
“[These reforms would] establish a new level of identifier that can be used to support service provider organisations that would limit their access to existing national infrastructure, like the My Health Record system, streamline the processes to assign identifiers for non-AHPRA registered allied health providers, for example, and create much clearer authorisations to support the use of healthcare identifiers for health related administration purposes.
“[Other] changes … would improve the ability of software vendors to know how to connect patients to their healthcare data and how healthcare providers connect to one another through their systems.”
Mr Cleverley said the policy advice outlining these reforms was now complete, and the department was ready to seek the authority of the federal government to introduce the reforms into parliament.
“While the next steps associated with this work will be a decision for government, we are confident that the advice we have developed highlights that these reforms ultimately put the consumer in the driver’s seat, allowing them to safely share their health information in a modern and flexible healthcare environment for the long term,” he said.
“I am strongly of the opinion that if we can get the health identifiers framework right through the proposed legislative reforms, this will resolve signficant barriers for system integration in Australia from an interoperability perspective.”
Also in the works is a policy green paper to address the findings of a late 2024 DoHDA analysis, using the primary care sector as a use case to identify options to investigate how a national program to improve the cyber resilience of the health, aged care and disability systems could be established.
“The desktop analysis identified the importance of working with all stakeholders across health and aged care to more clearly define roles and responsibilities across all levels of government and the private sector, and establish an approach to sector uplift that aligns with existing cyber security digital health and health strategies and focus on data security and service disruption,” said Mr Cleverley.
The green paper will map the cyber security landscape and maturity levels across the sector, including roles, responsibilities and risks, provide options for establishing leadership roles and national standards that align with the Australian cyber security strategy, he said.
“Once this preliminary work is completed, the department will seek the minister’s agreement to undertake a broad national consultation using the green paper as a key consultation artefact.”
Mr Cleverley concluded by announcing that the department would be updating the Digital Health Blueprint 2023-2033 in the coming months.
