It Looks Like National Standards Setting (Including E-Health) Is Getting More Messy.

This appeared late last week.

Standards Australia quick off mark in review of royalties on SAI Global contract

PUBLISHED: 25 Sep 2014 00:05:25

Simon Evans

The 74-member Standards Australia organisation that made a last-ditch effort to try and be part of a buyout process for SAI Global has revealed a review of royalties for a key contract with SAI has already begun, and that its chairman is stepping down.

SAI’s former parent Standards Australia has just released its 2014 annual review which is the last presided over by chairman Alan Morrison. In it the firm outlines that it expects larger amounts will be due to the organisation from a revised royalties deal with SAI, but it doesn’t specify how much.

SAI last week revealed that after a protracted sale process which began in May with an indicative $1.1 billion proposal, it ended up without any whole-of-company bids.

Uncertainty over the key contract with Standards Australia for the publishing and sale of 6900 standards was one of the main reasons.

Private equity firms Pacific Equity Partners, which later brought in Kohlberg Kravis Roberts as a partner, made an original indicative buyout proposal in May for SAI which valued the company at up to $1.1 billion.

Standards Australia wrote to SAI just before the deadline for bids expired, saying it was interested in submitting a bid, but required more time. SAI and its advisers spurned that request.

The Standards Australia annual review for 2014 outlines that it receives royalties primarily based on net revenue from publishing sales under the contract with SAI, known as the Publishing Licence Agreement (PLA).

“A review of the calculation of royalties is being undertaken and it is expected that an additional amount will be due to the company,’’ the annual review states.

But it warns that currently there is no reasonable basis for estimating the amount receivable.

More details are here:

http://www.afr.com/p/business/companies/standards_australia_quick_off_mark_VBTYcxReLq0kafPNJjFPNP

What this means is that the price of printed Standards are very much likely to rise from their already hardly cheap levels and the chances of DoH continuing to fund e-Health Standards in the longer term would appear to be dropping.

Given this it would make sense to download all the documents you might need reasonably soon!

All that are presently available can be downloaded free from here (for now - sponsored by DoH):

http://www.e-health.standards.org.au/

I also thought I would see if I could find the NEHTA Standards Catalogue which we were told would soon be available in Feb 2013:

Here is the blog of the time:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/can-this-be-seen-as-acceptable-in-any.html

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Can This Be Seen As Acceptable In Any Way? Can’t See How.

Checked this link today.

http://www.nehta.gov.au/standards-catalogue

Standards Catalogue

The National E-Health Standards Catalogue (Standards Catalogue) consists of a collection of standards and specifications that are essential guidance for those who develop, sell, support, buy and implement e-health software in Australia. The catalogue provides a list of the standards recommended by, and specifications sourced or developed by, NEHTA, and is updated regularly.

What does the Standards Catalogue provide?

• advice on when and where the use of a standard is appropriate.
• can be navigated via  content classifications
• links to both de facto and de jure standards from national and international standards bodies including proprietary, business, and more openly developed standards.

Open Standards
We support the adoption of open standards where appropriate. These standards should require no royalty payments, be openly published, allow extension, promote reusability, and reduce the risk of technical lock-in and high switching costs. However, where open standards are not appropriate due to significant market or technical issues, we will adopt the standards deemed most fit-for-purpose, relevant and useful to the community.

Importance of Standards
Standards are relevant to all areas of our work, and provide rigour as well as a means of validation with external expert groups. The lack of clear standards makes it difficult for vendors to develop software applications that can support a broad range of communication within the health community. Vendors face developing their own solutions and accepting the risk of industry adopting a different approach. Where widely supported standards are available to vendors, the lack of agreement at a national level about their use can preclude their adoption.

Standards also benefit those who purchase and implement health software applications. Knowing which software products conform to agreed standards can greatly simplify the purchasing process, and increase purchaser confidence that the selected product will be fit-for-purpose. Standards also offer the potential to avoid vendor 'lock-in'.

The PCEHR Standards Catalogue currently being updated and will be available soon.

For any inquiries regarding Standards, please contact us at standards@nehta.gov.au

----- End extract.

The link above now goes below here and we still don’t have a catalogue of recommended Standards but we have a huge number of NEHTA Resources of unproven quality as far as I can tell in terms of clinical impact and value.

http://www.nehta.gov.au/implementation-resources

So bottom line grab what you need soon and wonder when we will ever see some better managed co-ordination and progress in E-Health Standards setting. I am sure not holding my breath.

David.