UX pushes out government's $389m health IT modernisation

The government’s long-running health delivery services modernisation has slipped back to a “red” project status, due to user experience aspects that are running over time.

The modernisation, which has been running for six years and has been allocated $389.4 million, seeks to enable new digital health services and uplift the health payments system.

Health delivery transformation general manager Brendan Moon told senate estimates that additional time was needed to deliver some current works, and that completion would run into the next financial year.

Work on a modernised Medicare claims tracker had been “pushed out by just a few weeks to make sure that we get through all of the testing and make sure it’s presenting the right user experience,” he said.

“Getting that right is critically important - it can actually cause people more confusion and cause more phone calls than it actually avoids if you get it wrong. 

“So, we wanted to take just a little bit more time to make sure all of the business rules were absolutely correct and so the user experience is correct,” Moon said.

Moon said that in addition to user testing, some system testing still needed to be carried out. He anticipated completion of that work in “early August”.

Moon said that “a couple” of other projects under the modernisation had also had delivery dates adjusted, but that new dates were not yet available.

Again, he noted, much of this work related to interfaces for staff and patients.

The program delivery has previously been impacted by the availability of Java and Angular developers.