Australian Digital Health Agency and CSIRO join forces to help connect Australia’s healthcare system

The Australian Digital Health Agency and CSIRO’s Australian e-Health Research Centre (AEHRC) have launched a new collaboration combining their skills and expertise to deliver a centre of excellence for connectivity across the Australian healthcare system, through the National Clinical Terminology Service (NCTS).

CEO of the Australian Digital Health Agency Amanda Cattermole PSM said the Agency’s collaboration on the use of innovative digital services through its partnership with AEHRC would create a world-leading terminology service and capability for Australia.

“It will further strengthen both organisations’ reputations as leaders in clinical terminology,” she said.

Under the new partnership, the Agency retains responsibility for governance and the strategic role of end-to-end management, SNOMED CT licensing and the relationship with SNOMED International, while CSIRO will deliver the services and functions required to manage the NCTS, as well as content authoring and tooling.
The intention of the collaboration is to enable connectivity across all health care settings. This is achieved through driving future interoperability standards and governance discussions across different systems and health care settings to improve connectivity.

Dr David Hansen, CEO of AEHRC said, “This partnership presents an exciting opportunity to improve the connectedness of Australia’s healthcare system. The services we provide will help enable different parts of the system to ‘talk’ to one another, enabling smoother health service delivery, reduced patient burden and fewer costs.”

The NCTS currently provides terminology services and tools that include an online browser, a mapping and authoring platform and CSIRO’s national syndication server (Ontoserver).

To date, more than 100 organisations in Australia have accessed the Ontoserver licence through the NCTS sublicence – lowering the barrier to the adoption of interoperability standards in our health records.

“We hope this extended partnership will see adoption escalate further,” Dr Hansen said.

Over the next five years, work will continue through this partnership to refresh other NCTS tooling and develop terminology content published through the NCTS. This will further improve health information connectivity for Australian consumers and healthcare providers.