The newly released National Health Reform Strategy 2026-31 marks an important turning point in Australia’s health reform agenda.
It places data and digital health at the centre of reform, recognising that better information, stronger connectivity and more effective use of evidence is key to addressing Australia’s biggest health system challenges, from rising demand. This is a significant shift, from treating digital capability as supporting infrastructure to seeing it as fundamental to health system performance.
But as I have observed in the past, Australia does not lack health reform reviews. What it has too often lacked is sustained implementation at scale. The test of this Strategy will be how quickly its commitments improve outcomes, support the clinical workforce, and creates a truly connected health system.
From building the foundations to creating value
Australia has spent more than a decade building digital foundations. Electronic prescribing, My Health Record, healthcare identifiers and digital clinical systems have improved the availability of health information. The next challenge is creating substantially more value from the data we already hold.
As the Digital Health CRC (DHCRC) argues in Unlocking the Value of Health and Medical Data, Australia’s future health system performance will increasingly depend on transforming fragmented information into actionable intelligence for clinicians, consumers, researchers and policymakers.
Too much information remains trapped within organisational, sectoral and jurisdictional boundaries. The consequences include duplicated assessments, fragmented care, delayed decisions, inefficiency and missed opportunities for innovation.
The Strategy directly acknowledges these challenges through commitments to interoperability, healthcare identifiers, discharge summary reform, performance reporting and a future National Health Data System.
Also, consumers do not experience health care as separate portfolios and funding arrangements. They move between general practice, hospitals, specialists, community care, aged care and disability supports, and their information must move safely with them.
That is why the proposed second tranche of reforms to the Privacy Act 1988 is an important part of the enabling environment. The draft legislation seeks to strengthen privacy protections, respond to risks from emerging technologies, and give regulated organisations greater certainty while supporting innovation. The legislation remains under consultation, but its direction is significant.
Connecting health reform with Australia’s digital health vision
In DHCRC’s 2022 report Australia’s Health Reimagined we envisaged a connected digital health ecosystem in which data flows securely across the system, evidence is generated from routine care, and innovation is rapidly translated into practice. The learning health system described in the National Digital Health Blueprint and Action Plan 2023-2033 reflects many of these same aspirations.
This new Strategy, supported by privacy reform, can provide a pathway for that vision becoming reality. The risk is that delivery proceeds too slowly, unevenly or through another series of disconnected initiatives. We cannot spend the next five years restating the case for interoperability while clinicians continue to navigate incomplete information and consumers repeatedly tell their story across different parts of the system.
This is why DHCRC has called for a nationally recognised blueprint for health and medical data, with shared goals, measurable targets and clear delivery timeframes. It needs to align currently separate strategies, clarify accountability and guide coordinated, long-term investment in national data infrastructure. Privacy, data governance, interoperability, workforce capability and research translation must advance as part of one integrated national program.
From roadmap to reality
Recognising data as a foundational reform enabler also sends a clear signal to Australia’s digital health, research and innovation sectors. If health data is a strategic national asset, then health reform is a nation-building opportunity with implications for productivity, research excellence, sovereign capability and global competitiveness.
Procurement decisions shape the technologies that enter the health system and its ability to innovate and deliver value. Procurement frameworks must reward solutions that are open, interoperable, evidence-based and designed for scale. Industry must be involved early, not after policy, technical and purchasing settings have already been fixed.
Australian digital health companies and innovators must address real clinical and operational needs, integrate with the broader system, and demonstrate value required to support adoption at scale.
Health services must be supported to adopt innovation, not merely pilot it. Evidence generation should be built into implementation from the start so effective solutions can be identified, improved and scaled.
What happens next matters
Australia has spent more than a decade digitising healthcare. The next phase must turn that investment into better outcomes, more connected care, improved productivity, and a more sustainable health system.
The policy direction is clear and the enabling reforms are taking shape. And Australia has the technologies, smarts and expertise to proceed.
What is required now is national coordination, transparent accountability and action at pace. Governments, health services, and industry must move beyond merely endorsing the reform agenda to actively embedding it in investment, procurement and implementation decisions. Building a connected health system, with clear responsibility for delivery and measurable progress, will require collective ownership and practical adoption of the Strategy across the system.
Australia needs to begin realising value now, rather than waiting for the next health reform review to restate the case for action.
Viewpoint articles are the author’s opinion, produced without payment or sponsorship.
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