This appeared last week:
Australian Digital Health Agency launches Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap
July 1, 2025 11:52 am
The Australian Digital Health Agency has released the Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap as part of the launch of the national health information exchange project, Health Connect Australia.
The overall aims of the programme look at improving access to health information between healthcare participants while also addressing the “evolving needs of Australians and healthcare providers” by enhancing the digital infrastructure in place.
Three separate documents have been created to help tackle key challenges around digital health inequity and low digital literacy levels, with the first being based on strategy. It gives an “overview of the strategic intent and goals”, which includes improving access to health information for the right people at the right time, allowing patients to control their healthcare journey, establishing national digital health tools to support health outcomes and making sure information is secure, high quality and addresses privacy concerns.
The agency also focuses on architecture, with an aim “to enhance national digital health interoperability” over the next five years, with 13 different intents outlined, including adopting a consumer-centric approach, supporting local investment and innovation, developing architecturally resilient technical platforms that can accommodate change, approaching technologies and practices with an ecosystem-wide perspective and more.
As well a high-level indicative representation of the roadmap detailed from 2025 to 2030 and beyond is shared. Split by four phases: a foundations phase (2025-2026), which looks at the establishment of a national directory for seamless access to provider information; a sharing phase (2025-2028), focusing on the secure communication of health information between providers and improving consumer access; a discovery phase (2027-2029), working on developing a record discovery service to locate and access healthcare information; and an enhancement phase (2027-2030+), which introduces value-added digital services.
Agency chief clinical adviser (medicine), Dr Amandeep Hansra spoke on the introduction of Health Connect Australia, saying: “The frustration for consumers having to constantly retell their story and clinicians trying to find information such as pathology and diagnostic imaging results, is real, and Health Connect Australia will ensure that a person’s health information moves with them though the system, enabling seamless care.”
Learn more about the Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap. (© Australian Digital Health Agency, 2025 Health Connect Australia Strategy, Australian Digital Health Agency.)
Here is the link:
And we have this – which provided links to some details:
Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap
- Corporate plans
- Reconciliation Action Plans
- Leadership Strategy
- Workforce Strategy
- Assessment framework for mHealth apps
- Cyber Security Strategy
- Clinical Governance Framework
- Conformance Framework
- National Digital Health Capability Action Plan
- National Healthcare Interoperability Plan
- National Healthcare Identifiers Roadmap
- Clinical Governance Performance Report
- Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap
The Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap articulates the overall architectural vision for creating a digital health ecosystem that enables secure, efficient and standardised information exchange across Australia's healthcare sector. It was developed in consultation with government, industry and peak bodies, and informed by more than 500 items of feedback from key stakeholders.
The Health Connect Australia Strategy, Architecture and Roadmap consists of 3 key documents:
- Health Connect Australia Strategy – provides an overview of the strategic intent and goals of the program including its architecture and delivery approach.
Download the Health Connect Australia Strategy (PDF, 1018.7 KB)
- Health Connect Australia Architecture – outlines a high-level architecture for Health Connect Australia, designed to enhance national digital health interoperability. It provides a foundational framework to guide consistent solution design across the healthcare ecosystem. Further detail on specific technologies and solution architecture will be provided during each program phase.
Download the Health Connect Australia Architecture (PDF, 2.12 MB)
- Health Connect Australia Roadmap – provides a high-level indicative representation of the program’s phases, including the key outcomes delivered in each phase. It also highlights the prioritised business themes, dependencies and key considerations for the program.
Download the Health Connect Australia Roadmap (PDF, 1.1 MB)
Learn more about Health Connect Australia.
Date last updated: 30 June 2025
Here is the link:
For oldies like me there is a real sense of déjà-vu with so many of these documents looking like a rehash of previous versions of documents most of us have seen often from many years past!
I suppose there is change – but it really feels to be pretty glacial to me!
As for actual progress and improved delivery of services I will let the reader be the judge!
David.
5 comments:
I suppose there is change – but it really feels to be pretty glacial to me.
Glacial indeed. As the ice continues melting and the sea keeps rising the risk of being swamped continues to increase.
The basic fundamentals of a useful, meaningful, informative, medical record which can be compiled and exchanged between those who need it has been buried.
The technologists have control of the digital health agenda with this all-encompassing document. The clinicians and health providers have no influence. The health software vendors become increasingly sidelined and impotent. Government reigns supreme whilst achieving little other than disruption and confusion. Another decade mirroring the last decade lies ahead.
"Health Connect" was the program in early 2000's which also ignored the working HL7V2 standards at the time and tried to reinvent the wheel and failed... Subsequently we have had multiple versions of NEHTA and ADHA all of which have failed, but learning from experience is not a government strong point. The vast majority of clinical messaging continues to use HL7V2 without a viable alternative in place, but that's "Old technology" which basically means I don't understand it and fail to grasp the brilliance of the people who created it.
We don't need a high level architecture, we need a focus on the quality of the low level data quality and standards compliance which them allows high level solutions to be reliably built. Without base level data quality high level plans are doomed to fail, must be north of $3 Billion of wasted taxpayer money by now.
It's telling that no one has said "Enough is enough" by now. The real world systems continue to function with a focus on low level data quality, something that government institutions are positioned at the bottom of the ladder of quality on. Meanwhile software companies have been pushed from pillar to post trying to appease the idiots in these "National eHealth Authorities" You are doomed if you actually try that as there is no cohesive strategy in the Canberra cloud.
The best way to understand why the ADHA will go nowhere other that where it has been before is to read the following 101 Idiot’s guide to Health Connect Australia
https://www.medicalrepublic.com.au/an-idiots-guide-to-health-connect-australia-and-related-sometimes-confusing-things/118230?utm_source=MC-TMR%20List&utm_campaign=What%20will%20it%20take%20to%20make%20medicine%20kinder?&utm_medium=email&utm_content=What%20will%20it%20take%20to%20make%20medicine%20kinder?&utm_term=An%20idiot%E2%80%99s%20guide%20to%20Health%20Connect%20Australia%20and%20related%20
Appreciation to medical republic.
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