Clinical informatics vendor Cerner has won the implementation contract under the Victorian HealthSmart program to implement IT applications across all public sector health providers.

HealthSmart, a four-year project worth $323 million, has already signed up TrakHealth to provide a client management system, iSoft for the integrated patient and client management system and Frontier software for the human resource management system. Oracle has been selected to provide the financial and supply management system.

The HealthSmart program is expected to be completed in 2007. The clinical system will provide clinicians with timely patient history information, as well as the latest information to aid doctors in deciding on treatments.

Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said work has already started on standardizing the medical terminology that will become the backbone of the Victorian clinical systems implementation.

"The application will allow clinicians to order pathology tests, medical imaging tests and medications for their patients online, meaning quicker results and more time with patients," Pike said.

"It will improve medications management practices and automate ordering services. At the same time it will increase the availability and timeliness of information for clinical staff and reduce the administrative burden.

"By implementing these new systems, doctors will be able to access data from one clinical system within their health service rather than the multitude of systems they currently need to access."

Pike said standardized medical terminology is the cornerstone of the Victorian clinical systems implementation, and part of this project is to standardize the way medications and tests are ordered by a clinician.