Outsourced Telemedicine Service

 

Standards and specifications

General requirements

Cyber security

The service must demonstrate ability to effectively achieve mitigation strategies in line with ‘Essential 8’.

Privacy

The service must demonstrate adherence to relevant federal, state or territory privacy legislation for example, the Privacy Act 1988 (Federal) or Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 (NSW).

The applicable federal legislation is the Privacy Act 1988.

Details of the relevant state and territory legislations are contained under the State and territory requirements section below.

Core requirements

Standards for identification

The service must:

• support the use of Healthcare Identifiers in accordance with the Healthcare Identifiers Act 2010  
• support adherence to Patient Identification best practices as outlined by the Australia Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

The service should:  

• be able to discover and validate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) via the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service Business-2-Business web services
• support adherence to Patient Identification best practices as outlined by the Australia Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.

Australian Core Data for Interoperability (AUCDI)

The service should support the use of AUCDI Release 1.

Note: The focus of the AUCDI Release 1 is the representation of the clinical content necessary for each of the data groups identified within the Release 1 scope.

Development is continuing to enhance AUCDI.

Standards for data sharing

The service should:  

• support the authoring and consumption of clinical documents in Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) formats
• be capable of using HL7 FHIR-compliant API when sending clinical information

If the service stores, transmits, retrieves, prints, processes or displays medical imaging, it must:

• support the DICOM standard.

Standards for terminology, code sets and classifications

Where appropriate, the service must:

• support Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms AU (SNOMED CT-AU)
• support the use of MBS item numbers as defined on MBS online or the DVA schedule
• support Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT)
• be capable of using METEOR for recording clinical information with data specifications
• be capable of using Nutrition Care Process Terminology (NCPT)
• support the National Clinical Terminology Service (NCTS)
• support the inclusion of medicines listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG)
• support Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) updates to determine eligibility.

The service should:

• support person and provider identification in healthcare National Best Practice Data Set
• support the capture of information to support Australian PBS regulatory requirements
• support the use of content from the National Health Services Directory.

National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards

Implementation of NSQHS is mandated in all hospitals, day procedure services and public dental services across Australia.

The service must:  

• support adherence to best practices related to Informed Consent  
• support adherence to all relevant National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards in accordance with the intended scope of the service being procured. These may include, but not limited to the following standards:  
  • Partnering with Consumers Standard
  • Communicating for Safety Standard
  • Comprehensive Care Standard
  • Blood Management Standard
  • Medication Safety Standard
  • Clinical Governance Standard.
• support adherence to all relevant Clinical Care Standards.

Other Standards

International

The service should comply with:

• ISO 13131:2021 Health informatics — Telehealth services — Quality planning guidelines.

National

The service must comply with:

• AS2828.2: Digitised health records where digitisation of paper records is required
• AS ISO 18308: 2022 Health informatics — Requirements for an electronic health record architecture
• ATS ISO 14265-2013 Health informatics – Classification of purposes for processing personal health information
• AS 5552-2013 E-health secure message delivery.

Connections to National Systems

Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service)

The software should:

• be able to discover and validate Individual Healthcare Identifiers (IHI) via the Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service.

My Health Record

The software must:

• be able to respect patient instruction not to upload at a patient and document level when contributing clinical information to the My Health Record system
• be able to access record information from the My Health Record as required
• be able to upload an Event Summary to the My Health Record system, if required
• support patient instruction not to upload
• be able to upload a Discharge summary to the My Health Record system.  

API Gateway or Government Provider Management System (GPMS)

If used in aged care, the software should:

• be capable of sharing relevant data and reports to the GPMS.

Medicare Online Claiming

The software should:

• connect to Medicare claiming channels using direct software integration
  • Medicare Online claiming (Medicare Online)
  • ECLIPSE integrated with practice management software (PMS)
  • Medicare Easyclaim.

National Authentication Service for Health (NASH)

If the service is connecting to My Health Record, the software must:

• have a valid NASH Certificate.

National Secure Messaging Network (NSMN)

The software must:

• support the NSMN solution design.

Specific pharmacy related systems

The software must connect to the:

• National Real Time Prescription Monitoring (RTPM) system
• PBS online-claiming system
• National Prescription Delivery Service (PDS).

Conformance

Electronic Prescribing

The software should:

• conform to the Electronic Prescribing Conformance Assessment Scheme.

HI service

The software should:

• have production access to the Health Identifiers Service.

HIPS

If the service connects to the Healthcare Information Provider Service (HIPS) middleware product, the software must:  

• conform to the HIPS conformance profile V1.  

My Health Record

The software should:

• conform with the My Health Record Conformance Assessment Scheme.

eReferral

The software should:

• have the ability to send and receive ADHA conformant eReferral

Discharge Summaries

The software should:

• have the ability to send and receive an ADHA conformance Discharge Summary.

Provider Connect

The software should:

• conform to the Provider Connect Australia service.

State and territory requirements

The following state and territory requirements must be upheld based on location.