Queensland Health considers data warehouse, BI pilot

Queensland Health is to begin piloting a new mental health data warehouse and business intelligence application as part of a wider push by the Queensland government to support mental health information management.

The project, formerly called the Integrated Mental Health Data Reporting Repository (IMHDRR), will address inefficiencies within the existing Queensland Health system that are associated with linking general health, mental health, human resources and costing data.

It will also help address the need for a business intelligence capability that’s able to facilitate service planning, evaluation and the enhancement of an evidence base to support clinical practice.

According to documents from the Queensland government, the repository will likely evolve over a number of stages, beginning with the design, build, test and implementation of a pilot IMHDRR system, which will in turn replace an the existing mental health information process application (MHIPA) system.

The second stage will involve the migration of three data sets from existing information systems — a client event services application, outcomes information system and Mental Health Act information system — into the IMHDRR computer system ahead of their decommissioning.

The third stage will review and confirm the business requirements of the project and examine establishing an information framework and data models for subsequent future streams of work associated with the IMHDRR system.

The new system follows on from the news in September that Queensland Health payroll staff continued to battle with the agency’s bungled payroll system. In July, the Queensland government, in the wake of its well-publicised shared services disaster last year, announced it would appoint a state government CIO to implement its digital economy strategy.

In recent e-health related news, the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) has licensed software from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to aid the move to a standardised dictionary of clinical terms as part of the Federal Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) project.

The $467 million project involves the establishment of a PCEHR system that encompasses patient health summaries which both patients and their healthcare providers can access by 1 July 2012.

Follow Tim Lohman on Twitter: @Tlohman

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