HOW TO CREATE AWARENESS AND ENSURE BROAD DISSEMINATION OF HEALTH INFORMATICS STANDARDS

There is a range of organisations with responsibility for information standards development within Australia. These include Standards Austra lia, which is formally linked to the International Organisation for St andards (ISO), the National Health Information Management Group, which deals with the government sector and several statutory organisations such as the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and the Nationa l Centre for Classification in Health. The different constituencies in volved with each of these organisations, the scope of healthcare infor matics and the rate of organisational and technological change in the industry present a significant challenge in ensuring that the standard setting process is highly visible, responsive and capable of demonstr ating its value through effective implementation. Creating awareness a nd ensuring broad dissemination of healthcare informatics standards is a key component in meeting this challenge. This can operate at a numb er of levels from strategic to operational. At the strategic level, it requires active engagement and commitment of the key decision-makers, both political and professional. This may require directly lobbying a nd promoting the benefits of standardisation to those decision-makers but can be achieved even more effectively by creating industry awarene ss and demand through carefully targeted presentations on the impact o f standards to broader health industry forums. At the tactical level, the standards development medium itself can be used to engage and gain commitment from government, professionals, vendors and the health ind ustry by operating as an inclusive, open and effective process. At the operational level, there is the opportunity for much more efficient u se of technology to create awareness of both these processes and their outcomes. The establishment in Australia of a web enabled National He alth Information Knowledge base built around ISO standards is one exam ple of the type of development which will assist in the acceleration o f awareness of standards and standardisation, which is needed to cope with the increasing demand. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.