Suppliers prepare for NHI format change

eHealthNews.nz: National Systems & Strategy

Wednesday, 22 February 2023

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Health IT suppliers have been asked to prepare their systems this year for a change to the National Health Index (NHI) number format, due to roll-out in 2025.

Organisations that use NHI numbers have also been made aware of the need to check and update their systems to ensure they accommodate the new format.

Everyone who uses health and disability services in New Zealand is assigned an NHI number, which currently involves a unique 7-character number. This acts as a unique identifier for that person and their information.

However, there are only so many numbers that can be created using this format and at current rates of allocation (avg. 12,000 to 18,000 numbers per month), these will be exhausted in 2025 and a new 7-character format will roll-out.

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Michael Dreyer, general manager national digital services and chief technology officer, Te Whatu Ora, says this change should not affect patient care because Te Whatu Ora has been working with providers and suppliers to ensure their systems are ready to use the new NHI number format.

“We would like people to be prepared in advance of the changeover and we have asked that people prepare their systems this year if possible,” he says.

“While we are confident that there are enough numbers in the existing format to last well into 2025, it is important that vendors and providers make sure their systems are ready for the new numbers to mitigate any risk that some parties may not be ready in time to start using the new NHI number format due to unplanned delays, particularly if numbers are allocated faster than we are expecting.”

The NHI’s sector facing test system has already been modified to accommodate the new format and test numbers are available in this environment.

A very large number of health sector IT systems use NHI numbers.

Medtech Global managing director Geoff Sayer says the company has been actively working with Te Whatu Ora over the last year and the NHI upgrade will be included in the Medtech Evolution release due in May 2023.

Medtech estimates it will take in total a month of development and testing work to implement the change in the Evolution patient management system.

“Over the last two years the development and release of improvements and new features for our PMS, in tandem with a number of mandatory sector updates, has been challenging,” Sayer says.

“Whilst we fully support the early preparation for the NHI Number change, the early July 2023 recommended implementation date has created pressure for us and for agencies, some of whom have been unaware that the change-over date is still two years away.”

Practices will need to upgrade their PMS version to get the change, which is why they have timed the NHI Number upgrade to coincide with a planned May 2023 Evolution release.

He says the effort to make the NHI Number format changes to the Medtech32 PMS will be significantly greater due to the legacy platform that it is built on, but they are actively migrating customers to Evolution and the goal is to complete this before the change is due.

Gabe Rijpma, chief executive of Aceso, says the NHI number in something New Zealand can be proud of, as it makes many things much easier to do compared to countries that do not have a national health identifier.

“The change itself won’t be a Y2K-like change, but it won’t be without pain,” he says.

“The key challenge is where applications have validations and checksums in place as well as the appropriate length definitions in their database and allowances and processing for interoperability messaging.

“Most of the software focused companies will have ways of addressing this, my larger concerns rest with the application estate out there that may have been home grown and where the original developer is no longer around,” Rijpma says.

Josh Robb, co-founder of Tend, says the company’s software already supports the new NHI format, which was relatively easy to do because Tend only started development after the updated specification was published.

However, problems could arise with the many systems that Tend interacts with and whether they will be able to handle the change.

Dreyer says Te Whatu Ora believes that most organisations using NHI numbers are aware of the need to check and update their systems to accommodate the new format.

“However, to ensure that everyone who needs to know about the change does know, we are continuing to discuss the changeover in our vendor and sector engagement meetings and will promote the changes more actively closer to the date of the new format being introduced,” he says.