Australia — JeHDI Helping Shape E‑Health Future

Min­is­ter for Defence Sci­ence and Per­son­nel, the Hon. War­ren Snow­don MP, today launched plans for a new mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar elec­tron­ic health record sys­tem for the Aus­tralian Defence Force.
Mr Snow­don said the new Defence Joint eHealth Data and Infor­ma­tion Sys­tem, known as JeH­DI, will link health data from recruit­ment to dis­charge and allow for treat­ing health prac­ti­tion­ers to access a patients com­plete health record.

He said JeH­DI is designed to improve the qual­i­ty of health­care to all Aus­tralian Defence Force (ADF) members. 

“This is a very excit­ing time for the ADF as they are tak­ing a key nation­al lead­er­ship role in the intro­duc­tion of elec­tron­ic health records through­out Aus­tralia and deliv­er­ing a sin­gle elec­tron­ic health sys­tem across the ADF,” Mr Snow­don said. 

“JeH­DI is a web based sys­tem which can be accessed wher­ev­er inter­net is avail­able, while still main­tain­ing con­fi­den­tial­i­ty and data integri­ty, JeH­DI will sim­pli­fy record man­age­ment and pro­vide imme­di­ate access to patients’ med­ical records and oth­er health­care infor­ma­tion. This will pro­vide great ben­e­fits to those who reg­u­lar­ly move, such as Defence fam­i­lies,” he said. 

“Defence Health­care presents some unique chal­lenges. Our mis­sion is to pro­vide the high­est qual­i­ty health­care to sup­port our oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty and ADF mem­bers with­in Aus­tralia. Lead­ing edge tech­nol­o­gy, like JeH­DI is help­ing Defence meet these objec­tives with greater speed and effi­cien­cy,” Vice Chief of Defence Force, Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al David Hur­ley said. 

The ADF has con­sult­ed exten­sive­ly with oth­er agen­cies includ­ing the Depart­ment of Health and Age­ing, the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans’ Affairs and the Nation­al eHealth Tran­si­tion Author­i­ty. JeH­DI com­pli­ments the Aus­tralian Government’s Nation­al eHealth Strat­e­gy, which has com­mit­ted $466.7 mil­lion to devel­op a per­son­al­ly con­trolled ehealth records (PCEHR) sys­tem that will be avail­able from 2012–13.

Defence will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­change data and infor­ma­tion between JeH­DI and the pub­lic and pri­vate health sectors. 

JeH­DI is also being devel­oped with Defence Oak­ton and CSC Aus­tralia. CSC, the world’s largest health sys­tems inte­gra­tor, has been select­ed as the Prime Sys­tems Inte­gra­tor to deliv­er the JeH­DI system. 

“CSC Aus­tralia is delight­ed to be Defence’s inte­gra­tion part­ner for the imple­men­ta­tion of the JeH­DI sys­tem. We have sup­port­ed Defence for over 30 years, and as an expe­ri­enced Aus­tralian Defence Prime Sys­tems Inte­gra­tor, we have a proven his­to­ry of suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grat­ing and deploy­ing IT sys­tems into the com­plex Defence Infor­ma­tion Envi­ron­ment,” Pres­i­dent and CEO of CSC Aus­tralia, Gavin Lark­ings said. 

“We are extreme­ly proud to con­tin­ue this sup­port as we imple­ment an elec­tron­ic health record for all Defence personnel.” 

Defence is invest­ing more than $55.7 mil­lion in the devel­op­ment and deliv­ery of the JeH­DI sys­tem over the next four years. The project will be devel­oped through a staged process includ­ing a pilot and is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by ear­ly 2014. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia 

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