NZ Health Terminology Service to launch at Digital Health Week

eHealthNews.nz: National Systems & Strategy

NZ Health Terminology Service to launch at Digital Health Week

Tuesday, 8 November 2022

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

The NZ Health Terminology Service is being launched at Digital Health Week this December, eventually providing access to all standard code sets, including those underpinning the new NZ International Patient Summary (NZIPS).

Alastair Kenworthy, chief standards advisor for data and digital at Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand, will launch it during a NZ Health Terminology Service Connectathon in Rotorua on December 5.

He says standard terminologies and code sets ensure common meaning in health data, enabling interoperability across the system and improving patient safety through accurate information recording and communication. Health providers and their industry partners will be able to use the service to keep the code tables in their own systems up to date.

Kenworthy expects to have all the relevant code sets for the NZIPS published on the NZ Health Terminology Service over the next six months.

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The International Patient Summary (IPS) is an internationally recognised data standard that includes an individual's core personal health information, such as health conditions, medicines, allergies, immunisations, and test results.

Te Whatu Ora is working with other Global Digital Health Partnership members, including Canada, UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, to adapt and implement the IPS.

The Health Information Standards Organisation (HISO) has developed an NZ version, which takes into account local considerations such as the mandate for SNOMED CT and use of the NZ Universal List of Medicines. HISO went to consultation on it between May – August 2022.

Kenworthy says HISO collected a lot of constructive feedback, and he was especially pleased to receive support from the Royal NZ College of GPs for such a standard.

The next step is to develop an HL7 FHIR version of the NZIPS so that developers can start to build it into solutions. FHIR implementation guides will be published on the New Zealand FHIR Registry.

Kenworthy says the NZIPS will be key to the Hira programme of work, acting as the main reference for the data it will present via application programming interfaces (APIs).

A standard IPS is being adopted globally to support the safe transfer of patient care across borders. Kenworthy says understanding of 'borders' has broadened over time to cover transitions of care within health systems, such as a hospital admission or between primary and secondary care.

"Most countries are now seeing the domestic value of a standard patient summary," he says.

The NZ Health Terminology Service will also ultimately include CanShare code sets, Aotearoa Immunisation Register code sets, and NZ Pathology Observation Code Sets.

HISO owns the maintenance of both the NZIPS standard and NZHTS. Other countries to have developed a similar national health terminology service include Australia, UK, and the Netherlands.