Medical intranet operates smoothly

By PETER GRIFFIN

Six years of intensive development has paid off for the health sector now general practitioners, hospitals, district health boards and the Ministry of Health can exchange information securely.

The level of development is also paying off for Telecom's Advance Solutions division, which derives around 5 per cent of its revenue through the supply of network services to the health sector.

Among the bigger health bodies, such as the ministry, the district health boards and ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation), network security is managed by Telecom, which runs a customised version of its Safecom product. Healthlink operates its own managed firewall service for the GPs, sending and receiving patient details via the internet.

Chris Quinn, Advanced Solutions' general manager, said the issue had been a question of connecting all of the users so that a GP could conduct a process all the way through to a district health board, the ministry or ACC.

The paper-based elements of information management in the health system leave temporary holes in patient records.

Quinn said that when a person was discharged from hospital, the process of updating the health records with his or her GP could take months. Online, the update was instant.

GPs generally ran practice-management software and tapped into health databases across a virtual private network operated by Telecom.

They were charged a set monthly fee that varied depending on the services they subscribed to. The system required GPs to have a broadband connection.

It is now at a stage where the health sector's 11,000 "sites" could be connected.

Healthlink now services around 3000 GPs, and those trading information online - such as patient records, x-rays, funding requests, appointment schedules or ACC 45 benefit claims - have to conform to security standards set up by the Health Intranet Governance Board.

Paul Cressy, the managing director of East Health Services, said the health intranet was making healthcare more efficient and could save money.

Quinn said Advanced Solutions had doubled its revenue year on year after absorbing the remnants of Esolutions, the failed e-business partnership between Telecom, Microsoft and EDS. The division now employs 370 people, two-thirds in Auckland.

The division was likely to break out its revenue in Telecom's financial accounts, probably in the first quarter of the financial year beginning July 1.