Publicly listed Melbourne software firm Global Health and the South Australian Department for Health have been ordered into mediation by the Federal Court next month over their ongoing licence dispute, in advance of a full court hearing set down for December.

Global Health first initiated Federal Court action in June last year after SA Health refused to discontinue using the Chiron patient administration system (PAS), an MS-DOS based system first rolled out by Global Health, then known as Working Systems Software, in 1995.