This appeared a few days ago.
Queensland Health scraps $68 million IT project
By Lydia Lynch
April 24, 2020 — 1.17pm
Queensland's Health Minister has defended his department's decision to quietly scrap a multimillion-dollar IT project.
The decision to dump the $68.5 million plan to replace the state's ageing laboratory information system was announced at the tail-end of a government press release earlier this month.
Queensland Health Director General Dr John Wakefield said the reason to "discontinue" the 10-year project was to "to ensure pathology services are not disrupted during the outbreak".
But Health Minister Steven Miles said the project would not continue, even after the pandemic was over.
"That particular project was already under review; the legacy product that is currently in all of our labs had its support period extended from 2019 to 2029.
"That platform is stable, it is well supported by users and so for that reason the governance board was already considering ... already reviewing that project.
"Then of course COVID-19 came along, which made the decision relatively easy."
A 2012 government audit found the current system, AUSLAB, which is more than 20 years old, was one of the most high-risk systems in the Queensland's public sector.
Mr Miles said it was considered "risky" back in 2012 because, at that stage, the "support period" was set to run out in 2019.
Work on Queensland Health's climate change strategy, its Medicines and Poisons framework, and its Rapid Results Program will also be put on hold during the COVID-19 crisis.
“More programs may need to be suspended as we scale up our efforts to fight the pandemic," Dr Wakefield said.
More here:
The first thing to be said is that Laboratory Systems can be very long lived and so it really makes sense no to be attempting a transition to a new system when the lab staff have ‘bigger fish to fry’!
That said, given the age of AUSLAB, to be counting on another decade from a system that has already been identified as risk seems a little foolhardy!
Here is a bit of the back story:
Qld picks supplier for state-wide pathology system overhaul
By Justin Hendry on Feb 8, 2018 12:10PM
Gets to work on seven-year project.
Queensland Health has handed Sunquest Information Systems a $68.5 million deal to replace the state's laboratory information system (LIS) over the next ten years.
The government went looking for a new system in early 2016 with a budget of $91 million. It had first flagged its intention to replace the system in its 20-year, $1.26 billion IT investment blueprint.
The current AUSLAB pathology system will reach end-of-life in 2020, but the department has said it will need at least seven years to replace it.
It was described as “unable to meet the current and future needs of laboratory services, in particular Pathology Queensland” almost two years ago, and listed as one of the top 15 high-risk systems still operating across the state in 2012.
The new Sunquest system will be delivered to 36 public pathology, forensic and scientific laboratories for all pathology disciplines.
It will serve 124 hospitals, 70 primary health centres and clinics, 17 aged care facilities and 33 extreme remote multi-purpose health services across the state.
More here:
Later news here:
Citadel bats away ‘end of life’ fears to clinch QLD Health extension
Its Auslab laboratory information system will operate 2029 now
Citadel Group has waved off concerns that its $60-million laboratory IT system has reached “end of life” to secure another year with Queensland Health.
The Canberra-based IT services provider’s long-running deal with the state health department was due to expire in 2022, but will now run on until 1 January 2023, meaning its Auslab Evolution software will operate until 2029.
Nearly two years ago, Citadel Group had flagged to shareholders that Queensland Health was intending to move to a global laboratory information system (LIS) following the Auslab’s expiry.
However, the extra time granted will now allow the publicly-listed Citadel to deliver an update to the lab test processing system, the company’s new managing director Mark McConnell informed shareholders.
“We are very proud of our history with Queensland Health, and this extension provides one of our longest-standing clients with the security of service, and an opportunity to see the benefits of our latest feature-rich enterprise laboratory software,” he said.
Queensland Health had originally flagged its intention to overhaul the Auslab system in February 2016, describing it at the time as: “end-of-life and is unable to meet the current and future needs of laboratory services, in particular, Pathology Queensland”.
More here:
From this one sees that at least the AUSLAB system is actively ‘loved’ and being supported and owned by a reasonably large company (Citadel Group – Market Cap about $250M – ASX listed) however it is not as large as Sunquest (supports over 1700 labs globally).
In all, unless some serious investment has and is being made in AUSLAB, the time will come to move and given the complexity that will bring the decision should be taken sooner rather than later and the move probably should be to a Global Lab Info System Provider – given the scale of the operations involved, and the population supported.
What do you think? Anyone with good info on how AUSLAB is presently going?
David.
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