Victorian health service releases EOI for electronic medical record solution

Victorian health service South West Healthcare (SWH) has released an Expression of Interest (EOI) for vendors to provide an Electronic Medical Record solution.

SWH provides more than 150 medical, nursing, mental health, allied health and community health services to a community of 110,000 people across the five Local Government Areas of Warrnambool City and the Shires of Corangamite, Glenelg, Moyne and Southern Grampians.

Among those services, SWH delivers a broad range of public inpatient and community mental health and wellbeing services (Mental Health Services).

The health service currently depends on a patient records management system locally deployed on its servers to support the delivery of Mental Health Services. The system supplements the primary patient records management system used for other inpatient services (InterSystems ‘TrakCare’).

Through the EOI, it is SWH’s intention to solicit interest for the implementation of a new, preferably cloud based, patient records management system to support the delivery of Mental Health Services to communities across the south-west of Victoria.

SWH is not considering replacing TrakCare as its principal patient records management system.

The principal requirements of the new solution are cloud-based integration and accessibility; user management and role-based access control; integration with external systems; clinical workflow support and security and compliance.

Disaster recovery and backup; remote access operability; mobile and SMS integration; and reporting and analytics are also required.

Based at Barwon Health (Geelong), the health service’s ICT network is centrally managed by the South West Alliance of Rural Health (SWARH). All software solutions deployed on SWARH managed networks need to meet with technical/security requirements of SWARH.

In addition to an EMR, the health service will require the successful contractor to provide a range of professional services, including project management services during project implementation and post-implementation support.

The successful contractor will be required to create training materials with training implementation delivered through a ‘train the trainer’ approach for SWH project officers and other select personnel. 

SWH expects the EMR to be fully operational by November 2026.

While the initial term of the contract will be determined as part of the Selective Tender stage, it is currently expected to be upwards of five years, with optional terms also included.

The EOI closes on 16 December 2025 at 11:00 am.