Queensland Health wins $154m of ICT in state budget

Queensland Health has won $154 million for new ICT infrastructure from the 2011-12 State Budget.

The state this week announced a record $11.7 billion budget for Queensland Health, including $1.82 billion for the agency’s capital acquisitions.

Those included $49.2 million of “IT infrastructure programs”, $12.0 million of “IT contingency and emergent needs”, and $13.5 million of “other health systems”.

Budget papers (pdf) also included $79.3 million for “e-health clinical systems”, supporting an e-health strategy (pdf) that won State Government support in 2007.

Earlier this month, Queensland Health CIO Ray Brown told the CeBIT conference that the agency was on track to deliver an integrated electronic medical record system in place by 2012.

He said Queensland approached e-health solutions from a state-wide perspective, with a focus on clinical leadership, policies and standards, and governance.

“The technology in itself will not produce benefits,” said Brown, highlighting the importance of change management and developing in-house skill sets.

“Stakeholder expectations have to be continuously managed … Clinical leadership has to be in place, and committed right across the agenda.”

The agency was also preparing to assume responsibility for more business software as part of a restructure of Queensland’s shared services provider, CorpTech.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ last year recommended that CorpTech be decommissioned, following a failed payroll implementation at Queensland Health.

“There’s activity happening now in terms of planning,” Brown told iTnews, noting that the agency would leverage its experience with enterprise-wide e-health applications as it assumed responsibility for more business software.

“[Responsibility for enterprise resource planning systems] will come to my team eventually; I’m confident in our ability to do that.”

CorpTech specialists and responsibilities were expected to be move to either Queensland Health, the Department of Education and Training, or a new, ‘rest-of-government’ provider, Queensland Shared Services by the month’s end.

A spokesman for CorpTech’s parent Department of Public Works said Queensland Shared Services would form on 1 July this year. No CorpTech staff had been reallocated to date.