A Canadian data warehouse will allow data harmonisation and information sharing.
Telstra Health has selected Canadian health data company, Smile Digital Health, as its new clinical data repository partner for Australia and New Zealand.
The partnership will enable Telstra Health to accelerate interoperability across its large and growing footprint in health and aged care by leveraging Smile’s HL7 FHIR-first health data platform solution and integration platform.
According to Telstra Health the platform will provide healthcare data harmonisation, integration and information sharing. It is built on open-source implementation of the FHIR specification, which Smile Digital Health said gives healthcare organisations full access to their network’s data without locking in to any one vendor.
A clinical data repository such as the Smile platform organises granular heathcare data collected from multiple sources in real-time. It enables reporting and analysis of patient data in a way that supports both access to single patient data as well as broader strategic planning.
Elizabeth Koff, head of Telstra Health, said that the partnership brought “best in class” FHIR data interoperability and data exchange capabilities to the region.
“The partnership enables us to provide the infrastructure and services for creating seamless and secure information exchange, improving patient care and better supporting clinicians and healthcare providers,” she said.  
Duncan Weatherston, chief executive of Smile Digital Health, said that its suite of solutions “make true healthcare interoperability a reality”.
“Working with us to build a data modernisation infrastructure, Telstra Health can seamlessly connect currently disparate systems and EHRs, and enable public health authorities to assist in population health analysis,” he said.  
Smile’s solutions have been used by health service providers such as the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the US to support a range of FHIR and clinical reasoning requirements. They were leveraged by the Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) to help modernise the health information exchange.
Smile worked with HL7 International on the international patient summary standard, which developed a set of reusable set of core data items that allowed jurisdictions and nations to create their own profile for an international patient summary, and extract patient data from existing electronic health record systems in real time.
A Telstra Health statement said that the Smile platform was the only scalable FHIR-native health data platform that worked with all HL7 FHIR resources. Telstra Health intends to build upon Smile’s platform with additional components to further drive healthcare modernisation regionally and on a broader scale.
