New Zealand's Health Information Standards Organisation is now developing new standards for interoperable health information exchange in the country.

In an update on the progress of the Hira programme, Te Whatu Ora disclosed that HISO is working on the NZ Core Data for Interoperability (NZCDI). Patterned after the United States' Core Data for Interoperability standards, it will be the "standard for the most commonly shared health data in clinical workflows and consumer access to data."

WHY IT MATTERS

New Zealand is enabling full interoperability across its digital health ecosystem. In 2020, HISO released the Interoperability Roadmap, which serves as its guide to achieving that goal. Its key deliverable is the local version of the International Patient Summary. An adaptation of the ISO and HL7 International Patient Summary standards, the HISO IPS is primarily a standard for the makeup and exchange of core personal health information.

This foundational standard is at the core of the New Zealand Patient Summary (NZPS), now live on My Health Record, which enables consumers' access to essential health information, such as laboratory results, community-dispensed medicines, and immunisation records. It can be accessed via a website or clinical applications.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

The first stage of the Hira implementation is about to close next month, June. So far, the programme has fulfilled its target of rolling out My Health Record during this period. Launched in February, the platform replaced My Covid Record, allowing people to access and view more health information beyond vaccination records, including their and their children's National Health Index details. 

After introducing the NZPS, the Hira team is now developing the NZPS  – Clinical View to provide hospitals with secure access to patients' health information anytime, anywhere. 

An application programming interface will be released soon to allow direct integration of the NZPS with more clinical applications, including clinical portals and practice management systems. 

This API will be added to the upcoming Health New Zealand Digital Services Hub, which will replace the existing Hira Marketplace next month. It will provide more services, including a developer portal with API testing capabilities and identity and access protections. 

In other related news, Te Whatu Ora has recently released the draft of the first API standards for the New Zealand health sector. It covers guidance and expectations for API design and development and API security. A technical standards committee under HISO has been set up to provide feedback on it. 

Meanwhile, the Hira team is expecting to onboard by end-May the first subscriber to the National Event Management Service, which provides near real-time notification of death events.