Allied health's digital access program gains first vendors

On 25 February, the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) announced that Beyond Essential Systems (BES) and Halaxy Pty Ltd have been contracted to provide allied health professionals with the ability to add to and access essential health information via My Health Record and electronic prescribing services. The access is intended to enhance clinical decision-making at the point of care, with these two software vendors being the first of many to sign up.

This is a result of the Agency’s approach to market through the Allied Health Industry Offer in September 2024, with the Agency Chief Program Officer Paul Creech saying that allied health professionals’ readiness to adopt digital health tools is matched by software vendors’ enthusiasm to design specific solutions for them. “Recognising the sector’s diversity, the Agency will co-design programs with vendors that are tailored to the unique needs of different allied health professions,” Creech said.

“This will be followed by Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service integration, My Health Record connection, electronic prescribing connection, and concluding with conformance and testing before product delivery,” Creech added. The software solutions will manage medical documentation and include functionality for authorised clinicians to generate electronic prescriptions through the National Prescription Delivery Service (NPDS), in an initiative that promises to significantly enhance the capabilities and efficiency of the allied health sector.

“We look forward to further integrating Halaxy with My Health Record for the benefit of clinicians and patients everywhere,” Halaxy Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Alison Hardacre said. BES CEO Michael Nunan said the project will leverage BES’s existing capabilities and that “we are committed to improving the management of allied healthcare consumers and will build on our capacity in collaboration with the Agency and other partners”. Following an extensive testing phase, the Agency expects to have allied health software products in the market by June 2026.

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