John Fletcher is the Northern Territory implementation manager for HealthConnect. He says that with a geographically dispersed multicultural population, and diverse technology base, Katherine has proved an instructive test bed for the HealthConnect project.
“Each of the medical centres involved was operating a different clinical records management system, and the first thing we had to do was to make the systems talk to each other,” Fletcher explains. “We’ve been able to get all the different systems to save to an open-source relational database called Firebird, which runs on a Windows 2000 Advanced Server located in Katherine.”
Having struggled for the last three years with distance, disparate systems, and patchy satellite broadband, Fletcher says the project is now at the point where consumer’s consent is being gathered to bring patient records into the central depository.
“When we started we required consumer participation every time their information was accessed,” Fletcher says. “Our biggest worry was that sensitive information should not be accessed unless it is directly relevant to treatment.”
However, clever business architecture and support from the participating healthcare providers has helped to overcome customer concerns, and resulted in a marked increase in customers agreeing to participate in the program.
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