About the HealthSMART Program

What is HealthSMART?

HealthSMART is the program implementing Victoria's $360 million whole-of-health information and communication technology (ICT) strategy to modernise and replace ICT systems throughout the Victorian Public Healthcare Sector. The ICT improvements provide healthcare agencies with the tools required to meet the growing healthcare demands expected in the future.

HealthSMART is providing the tools that will assist agencies to:

• Increase the quality and safety of care and improve health outcomes
• Develop more consumer-oriented healthcare
• Increase the efficiency of healthcare provision
• Improve the management and utilisation of resources
• Attract, retain and support a highly-skilled workforce through the strategic application of information and communications technologies.

HealthSMART is achieving these outcomes by:

• Replacing obsolete, unsupported core applications with capable, industry-standard products
• Introducing new systems capable of supporting the transformation of healthcare
• Refreshing and developing the ICT infrastructure
• Delivering ICT services through a shared service model featuring the use of core infrastructure across a sophisticated telecommunications network.

HealthSMART's guiding principles:

Applications & technology

• Cost of building, upgrading and customising technology to be reduced by appropriate standardisation.
• Applications and data to be hosted centrally in a shared services data centre
• Shared infrastructure designed to address concerns about the security of data.

Implementation

• HealthSMART managed as a single program by the Office of Health Information Systems (OHIS) within the Department of Human Services
• Agencies follow OHIS program guidelines when managing ICT projects, including contributing agency funds.
• Government financial support given to healthcare agencies using HealthSMART products supported by HealthSMART Services
• Existing government arrangements and collaborations used to maximise purchasing power
• Agencies responsible for ongoing support and maintenance costs
• This approach is intended to include, as much as possible, ICT investments to date and to target the removal of the significant risks and exposures that have been identified in the existing ICT environment.

How is HealthSMART being delivered?

The HealthSMART program (the Program) is responsible for managing processes to select applications, configuring these applications to reflect state-wide requirements ('state-wide footprint') and then implementing these applications into participating agencies using the state-wide footprint as a base.
Additionally, the Program is responsible for establishing and managing the shared ICT infrastructure that is required to support these applications and agencies use of them.
The portfolios that were established to manage the scope of work required were:

1. The Resource Management Systems portfolio, including:
   • the finance and material management systems (FMIS) project
   • the human resource management systems (HRMS) project
2. The Technical Services portfolio, including:
   • HealthSMART Services
   • Integration Services
3. The Patient & Client Management Systems portfolio, including:
   • the integrated patient & client management systems project
   • the client management systems project
4. The Clinical Systems portfolio.

A few changes to the functional scope of the Program have occurred throughout its life, the major ones being:

• Addition of a Picture Archive and Communications (PACS) project to provide health services with the capacity to manage their imaging services electronically and remove the need to print film.
• A payroll and human resource reporting project (HRMS Payroll) was established, in addition to the HRMS Rostering project.
• A Rural & Regional FMIS project to deploy FMIS functionality across all Rural Alliances.

As at December 2008 significant progress had been made across the Program and three business projects (HRMS, FMIS and PACS) had been completed and closed. The technical infrastructure, including HealthSMART Services and HealthNET, had also been established. Continuing this momentum of progress, as at August 2009, the initial roll-out of CMS to standalone community health services has been completed with upgrades scheduled to commence December 2009.

Remaining activity is focussed on implementing the Patient & Client Management Systems application and the Clinical Systems application across remaining agencies. The growth of HealthSMART Services and HealthNET continues to be incremental and in support of agency implementations.