The Australian Digital Health Agency is celebrating a milestone in the delivery of its National Healthcare Interoperability Plan, revealing that the finalisation of two actions in the latest reporting period mean 75 percent of planned actions have now been completed.
Peter O’Halloran, the agency’s chief digital officer, took to LinkedIn to share the news, noting that the remaining 11 action items are due to be completed by July 2028. “To everyone across the sector who has been involved in the delivery of these actions and to my colleagues in both the Council for Connected Care and the Agency, my heartfelt thanks for all of your hard-work and dedication,” he said. “That so much progress has been made over the last nearly three years since the launch of the Plan in July 2023 speaks volumes to the groundswell of support for digital health and to your professionalism.”
The quarterly update, which covers the period from January to March 2026, details progress on 44 actions set out by the Interoperability Plan across five domains: identity, standards, information sharing, innovation, and measuring benefits. Two of these domains, innovation and benefits, are now marked as completed, with finished actions covering interoperability innovation challenges, interoperability workforce, education content, an interoperability survey, the publication of an annual report, a review of policy tools, and an assessment of digital health maturity models.
Priority area two, standards, is also marked as 93 percent completed, with the agency having worked on terminology in digital health systems, specifications and standards, HL7® FHIR® AU usage, a standards catalogue, the National Digital Health Standards Program, a national library of terminology mapping, and more. One action remains outstanding, relating to API information exchange, with delivery planned for 2026-27.
Information sharing is 66 percent complete, according to the update, including interoperability in procurement, procurement guidance, an online interoperability toolkit, GP and aged care interoperability, and consent management. For 2026-27, the focus will be on completing an information sharing model agreement, to be followed by the remaining actions in 2027-28 covering the API Gateway information exchange, legislative health definitions, and harmonising legislation.
The area with the most work remaining to be done is identity at only 40 percent completed, with the agency having finished work on a Healthcare Identifiers Roadmap, a review of Healthcare Provider Identifier (HPI-I) conformance, implementation of the 2019 National Health Services Directory review, and Provider Connect Australia. More work is to be done on developing deeper network structures and integrating the National Health Services Directory and Health Provider Directory in 2026-27. By 2028, ambitions are to be using and promoting healthcare identifiers, using the National Health Services Directory, and using healthcare identifier matching.
Earlier this year, the Agency launched a call for feedback from software developers, with an aim to improve interoperability, sharing of health information and promote collaboration across care settings. It was specifically seeking input on guiding consistent implementation and national alignment to HL7 and FHIR standards, for “seamless integration across clinical and administrative systems”.
Wider trend: Interoperability
We were joined for a webinar looking at key steps toward making progress on interoperability by a panel including Neill Crump, digital strategy director at Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust; Ananya Datta, associate director of primary care digital delivery at South East London ICS; and John Kosobucki, CEO of OX.DH. In the session, we discussed how health and care can tackle challenges around interoperability, looking at the key steps that can be taken to make progress in this area. Our expert panellists shared details about their own projects and programmes, providing insights into strategy, approaches and potential improvements that can be made.
The newly-created Central East ICB, formed from Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB, and Hertfordshire, has revealed its five-year approach from strategy to delivery, highlighting the role of digital and data in achieving objectives and improving outcomes for the local population. Contracts will set out expectations for data sharing and quality, it continues, and rather than being considered “an administrative add-on”, data will form a core enabler of improvement and accountability work. Over the next three years, the system’s data approach will look to build a single, shared foundation to support better decision-making, with the aim of having a unified view of data to help understand need, target interventions, and track outcomes. Data and analytics will be brought together under one integrated platform, it states, and further work will be done on improving interoperability, data quality, governance, and standardisation.
NHS England has issued guidance for regions and ICBs setting out practical planning instructions for developing neighbourhood health centres. Under the guidance, digital check-in and reception functions are expected to support streamlined access, with self-service digital check-in points integrated with the NHS App and shared care systems to enable patients to register efficiently. Each centre should be designed as an interoperable and data intelligent facility, offering connectivity with shared care records, the NHS App, and system digital platforms, and “crucially” should be linked digitally with all other neighbourhood health centres in its locality. “This connectivity means that each centre spans far beyond its physical footprint,” NHSE says. “Real-time utilisation and occupancy data flows across the whole neighbourhood health centre network enable dynamic space sharing, co-ordinated scheduling and cross site service optimisation.”
