CONNECTING HEALTHCARE 2010: Integrating Healthcare to Improve Patient Information Flow, Data Quality, & Consolidate Health Records. Sydney, 9 - 10 February 2010.

Introduction As the conference participants gathered there was much anticipation in the air. Calls for redevelopment of the national health infrastructure were growing louder and the winds of change were blowing. The timing of the conference coincided with two important developments in health policy, both having the potential to substantially change health information practices. The Rudd Government’s recently released National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission (NHHRC) report was fresh in everyone’s mind (National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission 2009), as was the impending tabling in Parliament of the National Healthcare Identifiers legislation in the Health Identifiers Bill 2010, a key component of the National E-Health Transition Authorities (NEHTA) National eHealth Infrastructure. The legislation was introduced to parliament during the second day of the conference. The future of e-health was firmly on the national agenda and all interested stakeholders were eager for news of the latest developments. With this backdrop, the Connecting Healthcare conference began. The conference proved an excellent forum for discussion of these issues and to hear from speakers from various parts of Australia who gave presentations on e-health projects and implementation of initiatives in which they had been involved in recent times. The benefits and limitations of these systems were highlighted, along with stories of the successes and difficulties faced during implementation. These presentations and the implications of the issues outlined above were discussed by delegates both during and between sessions.