How does the Industry Forum relate to HISAC and its subcommittee HISO?
How does the Connected Health approach fit with the prescribed Health Network Code of Practice?
How does HPI fit into the Directory Services model?
Who owns and is accountable for Connected Health?
Do DHBs support Connected Health?
Will the DHBs continue to make independent purchasing decisions?
Is it just data connectivity, or voice, video etc as well?
How will the products and services be certified?
What is the role of the GSN, KAREN and other existing high performance networks?
What is disaggregation?
What influence can the Industry Forum have on the Connected Health framework principles?
Who will define the criteria for Quality of Service?
What is the relationship of the Connected Health Industry Forum to the Carrier Forum?
Is the Industry Forum a vehicle for the Ministry to get free consulting from industry bodies?
What was the DHB feedback on the architecture?
What can you tell us about the Connected Health management entity?
How does the work Connected Health is doing on Security and Authentication standards align with the work being done by HISAC?
Dot Health Domain. What is the status of the development of this concept?
What is the relationship between the Connected Health Directory Services and the HPI and NHI services?
What is the status of the Directory RFP?
What is the likely process for Connected Health Standards to be developed and how does this relate to the HISO candidate standards development process?
Where is the funding coming from to stimulate whole of government broadband aggregation?
Who will provide advice to customer segments as to which are certified products.
How does the Industry Forum relate to HISAC and its subcommittee HISO?
Connected Health will work with HISO to develop the standards required for interoperability. The Industry Forum will recommend candidate standards as the voice of industry suppliers, which will then be formally considered by HISO. The Connected Health workstream will ensure that whatever standards are developed from the HISO processes fits with the Connected Health framework. Any standards developed by Connected Health will be submitted to HISO as candidates for approval and shared with the Industry Forum.
How does the Connected Health approach fit with the prescribed Health Network Code of Practice?
The Code of Practice is current for the present status of the Health Network. The Code of Practice will be reviewed and updated accordingly with the implementation of Connected Health. This Code of Practice is currently under review by HISAC EAC, which is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2008.
How does HPI fit into the Directory Services model?
The current view is that the Directory Service will provide the electronic addresses of network locations and vendors will have the ability to use it to provide the locations of their applications. HPI is a comprehensive source of trusted information about health practitioners for the NZ Health and Disability Sector maintained by the Ministry of Health. HPI data will be a key link to the electronic addresses stored in the Directory Services ‘engine’.
Who owns and is accountable for Connected Health?
Connected Health is a Ministry of Health funded project, with Health and Disability Sector involvement. The Ministry project sponsor is Brendan Kelly, Acting Group Manager, Information Strategy & Architecture.
Do DHBs support Connected Health?
The DHBs are supportive of the Connected Health plan. Implementation specifics are still being determined by DHBs and the Ministry. There is a strong level of engagement between Connected Health, the DHB IT departments, as well as the broader Sector.
Will the DHBs continue to make independent purchasing decisions?
Co-ordinated procurement strategies will be developed as part of Connected Health. How these will apply to each DHB has yet to be determined.
Is it just data connectivity, or voice, video etc as well?
It is expected that there will be many different uses of connectivity to support many different health sector services and applications – including telemedicine.
Connected Health will define service categories to ensure that all members have the appropriate level of connectivity and infrastructure as required. This will help to enable consistency in the level of performance, quality and reliability associated with services provided, like data transport, voice, video etc.
How will the products and services be certified?
Certification of products will be an important aspect of Connected Health as it ensures that what the sector buys will provide the benefits expected. The certification process is currently being developed and will be reviewed with the Industry Forum. A process will be implemented to ensure that certified products and services continue to meet the certification service level agreements once they are deployed.
What is the role of the GSN, KAREN and other existing high performance networks?
GSN, KAREN and other whole-of-government networks are focused on providing specific services and are unlikely to provide connectivity services to Connected Health.
What is disaggregation?
The principle of disaggregation is fundamental to the success of Connected Health. Products certified for Connected Health must be available for the Sector to purchase independently from the application or network access link. Suppliers can still offer bundled solutions, however, a customer must be able to add and integrate any application or service they want to that bundle.
What influence can the Industry Forum have on the Connected Health framework principles?
The Connected Health programme created new principles which are intended to provide suppliers and purchasers certainty around key product attributes which are needed by health service providers.
The Industry Forum members had the opportunity to comment on the principles at the draft stage. This document is currently in the process of being converted into a HISO endorsed publicly available specification document.
Who will define the criteria for Quality of Service?
The Industry Forum members will have the opportunity to have input on the quality of service criteria.
What is the relationship of the Connected Health Industry Forum to the Carrier Forum?
The Carrier Forum was formed to address the unbundling of Telecom. It is an independent and incorporated body with an elected board and working groups. While it works with the Commerce Commission it is independent of the commission. It aims for unanimous agreement on standards and rules for products and services at the wholesale level. Members are, by and large, telecommunications carriers.
The Connected Health Industry Forum is sponsored by the Ministry of Health, with the aim of providing input to the standards and practices that will be the basis of the Connected Health framework. Membership of the Connected Health Industry Forum includes all health ICT suppliers from connectivity to health application developers.
Is the Industry Forum a vehicle for the Ministry to get free consulting from industry bodies?
No. In fact the Ministry is providing a lot of information (e.g. technical framework, market research results) at no cost. Participation in the Industry Forum provides members the opportunity to have an early view of technical issues and considerations relating to technical standards - instead of RFPs and proposals being the first exposure to these. Members can, if they wish, propose and shape the standards relating to Health Sector technology, rather than just be reactive to individual sales opportunities.
What was the DHB feedback on the architecture?
Most of the DHBs feedback was on the functions and features rather than the technical nature of the architecture.
What can you tell us about the Connected Health management entity?
Please refer to the Connected Health Governance presentation given at the Industry Forum held on February 14th 2008.
How does the work Connected Health is doing on Security and Authentication standards align with the work being done by HISAC?
Connected Health has a representative on the EAC (Expert Advisory Committee) to ensure alignment of the authentication and security standards with HISAC’s review process.
Dot Health Domain. What is the status of the development of this concept?
An application was sent to InternetNZ during March 2008 and a decision on the approval is expected in September 2008. The domain will be owned and moderated by the Ministry of health and will be open to organisations that provide healthcare services as their core business. Vendors will not be eligible for the dot health domain.
What is the relationship between the Connected Health Directory Services and the HPI and NHI services?
The NHI is an index for patients and will not be used in the Directory. The HPI is an index of registered practitioners and is intended to be used as an identifier for data sets in the Directory.
What is the status of the Directory RFP?
The RFP is currently in the business case stage and is expected to be ready for release in September 2008.
What is the likely process for Connected Health Standards to be developed and how does this relate to the HISO candidate standards development process?
- The Industry Forum can propose specifications to form the basis of Connected Health Standards. These may be existing industry standards or new regulated specifications such as those being developed as part of the Local Loop Unbundling process.
- The specifications are then reviewed by the Industry Forum standards working group.
- Once the specification has been agreed Connected Health will submit the candidate standard to HISO for approval via their normal processes i.e.: An Expert Advisory Group (EAC) reviews the specifications to ensure if meets Health Sector requirements.
- If a specification is not available Connected Health will commission the development of appropriate standards.
Where is the funding coming from to stimulate whole of government broadband aggregation?
The Ministry of Economic Development has funding for broadband investment. Health and Education demand aggregation will be coordinated centrally by SSC with representatives from Health and Education. Connected Health principals are intended to apply to the funding criteria to help ensure that health benefits are achieved in the overall objectives of demand aggregation.
Who will provide advice to customer segments as to which are certified products.
Connected Health may communicate with the sector where appropriate to support any vendor communications. A central repository under Connected Health management is being considered that may provide information covering certified products and accredited vendors.
