Concept of Operations: Relating to the introduction of a Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record System
6.1.1 End-to-end system attributes
Even though the PCEHR System is a ‘system of systems’, the system as a whole will be required to ensure common levels of service around the following attributes.Table 3: System attributes
| Attribute | Description |
|---|---|
| Connectivity | The PCEHR System needs to accommodate a range of users with different levels of connectivity. This includes users with current broadband connectivity and emerging NBN connectivity, as well as users with lower levels of connectivity, such as users accessing the system via satellite connections or with intermittent connectivity. |
| Performance | The PCEHR System needs to achieve a high standard of performance and ensure that its performance does not hamper its ease of use. |
| Scalability | The PCEHR System needs to be scalable, with the capability to add extra capacity as the demand for access to the PCEHR System increases. |
| Availability | The PCEHR System portals, core services and repositories need to be available 24/7 with inbuilt redundancy measures. The call centre will also be available 24/7. |
| Business continuity | The PCEHR System will be required to meet clear expectations on how it will recover and restore interrupted critical functions within a predetermined time after a disaster or extended disruption. A succession plan also needs to be included in the event of the inability of the supplier to continue providing the service. |
| Serviceability | The PCEHR System will be required to be built from components that can be operated, configured, maintained, enhanced and replaced by a 3rd party. |
| Security | The PCEHR System must meet or exceed the security requirements set out in Section 5.3. |
| Data Quality | The PCEHR System must meet or exceed the data quality requirements discussed in Section 4.2.1. |
| Clinical Safety | The PCEHR System must meet or exceed clinical safety requirements discussed in Section 7.4.2 |
| Usability | The PCEHR System needs to be intuitive and easy to use. Users with basic internet skills and no or limited training should be able to use the basic features of the system. It is anticipated that some more advanced features may require additional training. |
| Standards Conformance | The PCEHR System will use a standards-based approach and will leverage existing Australian and International Standards and technical specifications. This is discussed further in Section 6.1.2. |
These attributes will be built into specifications and/or Service Level Agreements for the different components of the PCEHR System. A number of these attributes will also be leveraged from standards and specifications to be implemented by conformant systems that connect to the PCEHR System.
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| Design Note: As far as permissible with system policy settings, the aim of the PCEHR System is to maximize the above system attributes whilst retaining the flexibility around implementation. Achieving appropriate levels of responsiveness, availability and security will be challenging in a federated system. Therefore the design choice has been made to implement a number of services nationally (such as the “Index Service”, “Participation and Authorisation Service” and a “National Repositories Service” for key information). It is likely that Conformant Portals and Repositories will also need to be tightly regulated. |
