Consultmed has gone live with an integration allowing referrals, discharge summaries, specialist reports and clinical letters to be automatically uploaded to My Health Record.
Developed in partnership with the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), the integration allows documents sent through Consultmed to a GP, specialist or community provider to be uploaded to the patient’s My Health Record at the same time.
Consultmed said the capability was available to health services already using its platform to send or receive the documents, without requiring additional software or a separate upload process.
The integration also covers correspondence from nursing and allied health clinicians, including assessments, care plans and reports.
Consultmed CEO and consultant paediatrician Associate Professor Vikram Palit said referrals, discharge summaries and specialist letters were important for transferring information between different parts of the health system, but were also among the documents most likely to be missed.
“Getting these documents into My Health Record was never really about willingness. It was about plumbing,” A/Prof Palit said.
“Integrating with My Health Record is unfortunately not a simple feat. It takes at least several months of work and significant technical resources.
“We have now completed this work so that any health organisation, large or small, can use Consultmed both to send referrals, letters and discharge summaries securely to each other but also share those documents to My Health Record.”
The launch comes as the federal government progresses its sharing by default reforms for My Health Record, which will require specified clinical information to be uploaded to the national record.
Pathology and diagnostic imaging reports were the first document types included under the reforms, while the 2026-27 federal Budget included funding to expand sharing by default to medicines information and GP chronic condition management plans.
A/Prof Palit said automatically uploading correspondence through existing clinical workflows could help health services prepare for the broader shift towards sharing information by default.
“We are pleased to align with the Government’s sharing by default approach,” he said.
“The GP’s letter, the specialist’s report and the allied health assessment can all be uploaded as they are sent, and be in the patient’s hands straight away. It is after all, the patient’s record.”
Consultmed said organisations across its network had registered interest in enabling the integration, including Local Health Districts, Primary Health Networks, urgent care centres, private specialist practices and community providers.
Several organisations are expected to go live with the integration in the coming months.
Consultmed said more than 55,000 healthcare professionals currently use its platform across Australian health networks.
Add Comment