The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) is preparing to pilot its new national healthcare provider directory with NT Health next month, ahead of a planned national rollout from March 2027.
The directory is one of two foundational services being developed under Health Connect Australia, the national health information exchange programme designed to support secure sharing of clinical information across healthcare systems.
Speaking at the Australian Association of Practice Management (AAPM) national conference on Wednesday, Health Connect Australia Programme Director Nicole Gartrell said the foundational phase was nearing completion.
The NT Health pilot is scheduled to run from November until February, with the national rollout to begin in March.
The directory will provide a single access point for information about healthcare practitioners and organisations, including professional registration details, healthcare identifiers and electronic contact information.
It will bring together information from existing sources to help healthcare organisations identify providers and exchange information securely.
Ms Gartrell said changes to the Healthcare Identifiers Act meant the directory would operate on an opt-out basis, allowing registered practitioners to be included without having to individually consent.
The directory will not be publicly accessible, with access restricted to eligible healthcare providers, organisations and health administration entities.
Consumers will be able to access a subset of the directory’s information through Healthdirect.
Further information exchange capabilities planned
The provider directory and an associated authorisation service form the first phase of Health Connect Australia, with further information sharing and discovery capabilities planned for late 2028 and into 2029.
Ms Gartrell said the authorisation service would establish a trusted network for exchanging clinical information, while later phases would introduce standardised information exchange and the ability to discover where patient records are held.
The proposed discovery service would allow users to identify where patient records are held across different healthcare organisations, including hospitals, general practices and other services, and support requests to access that information.
The programme will use FHIR APIs to support the exchange of structured health information.
Unlike My Health Record, which relies on clinical documents and summaries being uploaded to a central repository, Health Connect Australia is intended to support the exchange of information between existing healthcare systems.
Ms Gartrell said the two systems would coexist.
The programme is also being developed alongside changes to legislation and policy governing health information sharing, including a review of the My Health Records Act.
Provider Connect Australia enhancements
Ms Gartrell also outlined forthcoming enhancements to Provider Connect Australia (PCA), the ADHA service that allows healthcare organisations to maintain and distribute information about their practices and practitioners.
PCA will help supply additional information to the new national directory, including details about practitioners such as the languages they speak.
An upcoming release will simplify registration and onboarding, with Ms Gartrell acknowledging that the existing registration steps had been challenging for some practices.
Further integration enhancements are intended to make it easier to manage secure messaging details across different providers, while new functionality will support the sharing of practitioner credential information.
Ms Gartrell said the success of the national information exchange programme would depend on the accuracy of information maintained by healthcare organisations.
She told delegates that practice managers were particularly important because they held the most current information about practitioners, services, locations and operating arrangements.
The programme aims to reduce the need for practices to update their details separately across multiple directories and systems, while improving the accuracy of information used for referrals and other clinical communications.
Ms Gartrell said technology alone would not resolve the interoperability challenges facing Australian healthcare.
“Interoperability is not going to be solved for you,” she said.
The longer-term objective is to enable patient information to be discovered and exchanged between healthcare providers without relying on fragmented communication methods, including fax, email and manual follow-up.
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