THE Australian Digital Health Agency is offering community pharmacy software vendors grants of up to $250,000 to upgrade their products to support the My Health Record (MyHR) system.
The agency has launched an 'Industry Partnership Offer' with the aim of encouraging dispensing software providers to "incorporate digital health functionality, and the uptake of that functionality by their users".
The offer will see the Agency work collaboratively with the software providers and ensure they add the required functionality, and also "correct any perceived market advantage that may have been created previously, where only a small number of software developers have been engaged in Government digital health initiatives".
Previously Fred IT and Simple Retail have added My Health Record support under the former National E-Health Transition Authority's community pharmacy vendor panel.
The overall aim is to ensure that "high value consumers' health data is made available in the My Health Record to ensure consumers and their clinicians have access to this information".
Participants in the new initiative will agree to upgrade their existing systems to support the required functionality by 30 Jun 2018, including the ability to integrate the My Health Record system to enable viewing of customer information from within dispensing software.
See digitalhealth.gov.au.
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