Standards Australia’s Technical Committee IT-014, Health Informatics, has successfully concluded its two-year work programme with a total of 41 publications between 2012 and 2014. The publications cover wide range of e-health topics and are available online.

The publications include Australian Standards, implementation guides and technical specifications for a range of e-health topics such as telehealth, healthcare concepts, Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records, security, messaging, and clinical decision support. Standards Australia and the Commonwealth Department of Health have worked diligently to ensure that the public are able to access IT-014 Health Informatics committee publications. These documents are available currently through this link:

http://www.e-health.standards.org.au/Home/Publications.aspx

The following Australian delegates will be attending the HL7 International Working Group Meetings to be held in Phoenix, USA during the period 4-9 May 2014:

- Heather Grain

- David Rowed

The following Australian delegate will be attending the ISO/TC 215 Meeting to be held in Karuizawa, Japan during the period 19-23 May 2014:

- Richard Dixon Hughes

Notes prepared by Standards Australia related to the panel deliberations which also serves as feedback in accordance with the Funding Conditions and Selection Policy is now available from the following link:

Notes International HL7 and ISO delegation selection panel 10 April 2014.

Our current Funding Agreement between the Department of Health and Standards Australia (SA) provides funding assistance for an Australian delegation of up to seven delegates to attend international ISO and HL7 meetings throughout the year.

These meetings are generally timed as follows:

•          April/May – HL7 and ISO

•          Sept/Oct – HL7 and ISO

For each of these five meetings the Department of Health has now offered funding assistance for at least one additional position as a ‘mentored position’. This role is available to all active members of the IT-014 community to apply if they have been to two or less international meetings.

Standards Australia and our IT-014 stakeholders are very keen to expand the pool of health informatics experts who are willing to commit the necessary time, knowledge and expertise to the development and maintenance of national and  international standards. Applicants are assessed and selected on the basis of their technical experience, interests and ability to actively participate. The ideal candidate may not have had any international standards development  experience but is willing to become (or is already) an active member of the IT-014 community representing Australia’s interests and reporting back to IT-014 following the meeting.

•          Recipients receiving support benefit from participating in this activity in

            the following areas:

•          Gain first hand understanding and insights into the ISO system / ISO/TC 215

            health informatics and HL7 areas;

•          Interacting with and learning from the world’s leading health informatics

            experts

•          The opportunity to build and develop an international network of contacts in the

            sector; and

•          Gaining experience in negotiating and reaching consensus at the international

            level.

Standards Australia would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to consider applying for the position when the ‘call for nomination emails’ are sent out two months prior to the meetings.