New Zealand is developing national HIE standards
The New Zealand Health Information Standards Organization is now developing new standards for interoperable health information exchange in the country.
In an update on the progress of the Hira program, Te Whatu Ora announced that HISO is working on the NZ Core Data for Interoperability (NZCDI). It is based on the United States’ Core Data for Interoperability standards and will be the “standard for the most commonly shared health data in clinical workflows and consumer access to data.”
WHY IT MATTERS
New Zealand is enabling full interoperability within its digital healthcare ecosystem. In 2020, HISO released the Interoperability Roadmap, which serves as a guideline for that purpose. The main result was the local version of the International Patient Summary. An adaptation of the ISO and HL7 International Patient Summary standards, the HISO IPS is primarily a standard for creating and exchanging basic personal health information.
This fundamental standard is at the heart of New Zealand Psummary for the patient (NZP.S), now live on My Health Record, giving consumers access to essential health information such as lab results, community-dispensed medications and immunization data. It can be accessed via a website or clinical applications.
THE GREATER CONTEXT
The first phase of the Hira implementation is about to close next month, June. So far, the program has achieved its goal of rolling out My Health Record during this period. The platform, which launched in February, has replaced My Covid Record, allowing people to access and view more health information beyond vaccination records, including their own and their children’s National Health Index data.
After the introduction of the NZPSthe Hira team is now developing the NZPS – Clinical View to provide hospitals with secure access to patients’ health information anytime, anywhere.
An application programming interface will be released soon to enable direct integration of the NZPS with more clinical applications, including clinical portals and practice management systems.
This API will be added to the upcoming Health New Zealand Digital Services Hub, which will replace the existing Hira Marketplace next month. It will offer a wider range of services including: developer portal with API testing capabilities and identity and access security.
As for APIs, Te Whatu Ora recently updated its concept of the first API standards for the New Zealand health sector. It covers guidelines and expectations for API design and development and API security. A technical standards committee has been set up under the leadership of HISO to provide feedback on this.
Meanwhile, the Hira team expects to onboard the first subscriber to the National Event Management Service, which provides near real-time notifications of deaths, by the end of May.