Victoria has moved along at a rapid pace in releasing a tender this week for its planned health information exchange (HIE), the first step towards streamlining access to medical records across the public hospital system. As locals like to argue incessantly, Victoria’s devolved public health system has positives and negatives, but the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly shown up that disparate information systems and services can be a drag on a unified pandemic response.

As such, earlier this year the Crisis Council of Cabinet agreed to a plan to consolidate pathology services across Victoria, including the different laboratory information systems (LIS) that are used in the state, of which we are aware of at least four, all in various instances that do not speak to others. NSW is in a similar situation, and it is looking to consolidate its LIS systems through the NSW Single Digital Patient Record (SDPR), the successful vendor for which is due to be announced shortly.