ADHA sticks with Accenture for My Health Record support

The Australian Digital Health Agency will stick with Accenture for infrastructure services underpinning My Health Record, signing a new $162m deal.

The agency went to market for "application support and maintenance services" in July last year, testing a package of work that Accenture had held as the "national infrastructure operator" since 2012.

The NIO arrangement grew from $47 million to $788 million before an audit called for it to be retested in the open market.

Accenture has since made tens of millions more from a transition arrangement - required while ADHA tested the market - but has now landed the work again.

The new contract is worth approximately $161.6 million and runs for three years from August 28 2026 to August 27 2029.

There is one extension option, with a hard contract end-date of August 31 2032 for Accenture.

The open tender closed in October last year, and covers both the My Health Record system and the ADHA's API gateway infrastructure.

Chief technical officer John Borchi said the engagement with Accenture would be different this time, courtesy of a new operating model where the agency led end-to-end service delivery.

"The agency sets priorities for national digital health infrastructure, including My Health Record, coordinates delivery across multiple suppliers and, of course, retains accountability for governance, assurance and decision-making," Borchi said.

ADHA chief executive Amanda Cattermole said the new contract would support My Health Record at a time of significant and growing use.

Cattermole said there are more than 25 million active records, and around 207 million clinician uses in the past 12 months plus around 30 million consumer views each month.

"This contract will support those services while providing a foundation for future transformation as the Agency works with governments, healthcare providers and technology partners on the progressive transition to a modernised FHIR [fast healthcare interoperability resources]-based ecosystem," Cattermole said.

Telstra Health won a $33.2 million contract to implement a FHIR-based based data architecture for My Health Record.

Telstra Health is working with Leidos Australia and Canada's Smile Digital Health, with the data architecture designed to run in parallel with existing clinical document formats.

ADHA declined to say how many organisations tendered for the work, or whether any bidder other than Accenture reached the final stage of evaluation, saying the information is commercial-in-confidence and subject to procurement confidentiality obligations.