Dental Health Services Victoria - Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Project

Aim of the Project

Dental Health Services Victoria (DHSV) has planned a phased upgrade of its current ICT infrastructure and the further deployment of the EXACT dental patient management system that is in use at the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne and in Community Dental Program clinics.

The Dental Health Services Victoria ICT program will:

• Implement EXACT for the remaining dental chairs across the Community Dental Program (CDP) agencies where the application is not currently available “chair-side ”
• Roll out EXACT to all administrative and clinical users located at the School Dental Service (SDS) clinics. These clinics include examination and treatment vans, re-locatable and fixed clinics co-located at schools, community health centres and some hospitals
• Implement EXACT in a standardised way, utilising “open systems” database technology on centralised ICT infrastructure and using Citrix technology to access the system over a wide area network (WAN)
• Migrate all existing EXACT databases implemented locally at CDP agencies to the new standardised and centralised ICT infrastructure.

In line with the HealthSMART technical architecture, this central approach to ICT infrastructure for the EXACT system across DHSV will maximise benefits from the investments and minimise costs. It will lay a foundation to enable electronic health records for dental health consumers in the future and position EXACT to participate in future connectivity initiatives, eliminating duplicate entry and registration.

The project does not include:

• upgrading existing EXACT workstations at CDP agencies
• an electronic interface to Patient & Client Management Systems (P&CMS)
• implementation of digital radiography or an electronic interface to existing digital radiography systems.

Note:    DHSV recognises the importance of interfacing to the patient & client managment systems solution and the growing number of dental clinics with digital radiography systems. Any future initiatives in these areas will require detailed planning and separate funding.

This project will endeavour to ensure that clinics with already interfaced digital radiography systems do not lose any functionality.

Governance

The DHSV ICT Project governance structure closely follows the governance structure established to oversee the implementation of the HealthSMART program. The Project Steering Committee is chaired by DHSV CEO Robyn Batten and reports to the DHSV Board and the Office of Health Information Systems.

Timelines - as at February 2008 (may be subject to change)

• Planning and Procurement finalised in 2006
• Initial Central ICT infrastructure established in 2006
• Workstations deployed and WAN procured at pilot sites in 2006
• Pilot sites live on the new central version of EXACT in 2007
• Funding model for ongoing costs developed by second quarter 2008
• Workstations deployed for SDS sites (as WAN connectivity is available) by first quarter 2008
• Remaining central ICT infrastructure established by first quarter 2008
• Workstations progressively deployed to CDP sites in 2007
• WAN progressively procured for SDS and CDP sites by second quarter 2008
• EXACT rollout and database migration began in 2007. To be completed by second quarter 2008.

Relationship with HealthSMART

The project is funded by HealthSMART and falls within the Health Applications portfolio. The project has adopted the principles of the HealthSMART program and reports regularly to the Office of Health Information systems.

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