NSW Govt looks to tech partners for Single Digital Patient Record work

New South Wales’ Single Digital Patient Record Implementation Authority (SDPRIA), in partnership with eHealth NSW, has flagged plans to go to market for document management, integration and pharmacy systems work.

Two Requests for Proposal (RFP) are in the “early stages of planning”. One is for document management systems, including storage and repository solutions; document capture and scanning; and integration with Epic Systems’ electronic medical records (eMR) system.

The other RFP will be for pharmacy systems, including for inventory and stock management, medication ordering; outpatient and discharge dispensing; integration with the Single Digital Patient Record (SDPR) for inpatient dispensing workflows; and integration with automatic dispensing cabinets and robotic dispensing units.

The SDPRIA was formed last year and involves a statewide integration of eMR, laboratory information management systems and patient administration systems.

The SDPR program will deliver a statewide integrated eMR, Patient Administration System (PAS) and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) to 228 public hospitals, 600+ community health centres, 60 pathology laboratories and 150+ pathology collection centres.

Once the SDPR is fully rolled out, the goal is to enable healthcare teams in NSW to be able to use the same digital clinical system to access patient information, record the care they provide, order diagnostic tests and manage medications, no matter which public hospital or community healthcare facility they work in.

Epic Systems has been contracted to provide the technology platform of the SDPR and Amazon Web Services for the hosting of the SDPR.

According to ITNews, NSW Health currently uses nine EMR, six PAS and five pathology LIMS, with Cerner and Orion Health providing NSW Health’s EMR instances, Cerner and DXC providing its PAS instances, and Citadel (Auslab) and Integrated Software Solutions (OmniLab) providing its LIMS.

In June 2024, NSW Health tapped Telstra and NTT to deliver an infrastructure upgrade at hospitals and health services across the state. The upgrade was part of NSW Health's Health Grade Enterprise Network (HGEN), which would support the delivery of the Single Digital Patient Record platform.

NSW Government agencies must use the ICT Services Scheme to buy ICT goods and services, unless another mandated whole-of-government contract applies, therefore it is mandatory for interested tenderers to be registered as an Advanced Supplier under the ICT Services Scheme (SCM0020).