ADHA extends Accenture's My Health Record support deal for $100m

The federal government will pay Accenture $100 million to continue its support of My Health Record for another three years, as it looks to progressively decommission legacy infrastructure supporting the system.

The Australian Digital Health Agency entered a contract with the consultancy on Friday, bringing the total cost of the national infrastructure operator (NIO) arrangement to $741.2 million over 13 years.

The new deal replaces a decade-long contract for the design, build and integration of the system that expired at the end of June following two extensions: one for two years in October 2019 and another for a year in July 2021.

Accenture has held the lucrative NIO contract since 2011, when My Health Record was known as the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR). It works with a consortium of suppliers, including Oracle and Orion Health, to support the system.

An ADHA spokesperson told iTnews the contract with Accenture was extended to “ensure the continued secure and reliable operation of the My Health Record system” as the national infrastructure modernisation program continues.

“NIO’s services are currently supporting over 60 technology infrastructure components that together make up the core of the My Health Record system,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“The ongoing support and enhancement of these components is critical to enable the agency to respond to changing user requirements and government policy priorities while system components are successively modernised or replaced.”

Under the modernisation program, the agency has already sought to replace the Oracle API gateway underpinning the electronic health record with scalable platform exchanging and accessing health information.

Last year, it contracted Deloitte to deliver a gateway based on modern web services and standards for health information exchange and clinical terminologies such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) under an $18 million contract.

Having previously flagged the prospect of shifting the My Health Record to a cloud-based platform and leveraging open source software, the ADHA has also recently migrated the system to Microsoft Azure.

“The agency has migrated data to the government-certified strategic hosting services in the Microsoft Azure cloud in Australia, which meets enhanced privacy, sovereignty and security requirements for sensitive Australian government systems,” the spokesperson said.

The migration coincides with the ADHA’s migration of sensitive data and exit from Global Switch’s Sydney-based data centre last month, which was briefly delayed by supply chain issues.

A number of other federal and state government agencies have also left the facility recently, including the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Australian Communications Media Authority and Transport for NSW.

When both initiatives are complete, services previously delivered under the NIO contract with Accenture “will be delivered under other contracts”,  the spokesperson said, with other services expected to roll off following future market approaches.

“The extended contract contains terms that allow for the progressive decommissioning of NIO services as the national infrastructure is modernised, while ensuring security and reliable continuity of service until those changes are fully effected,” the spokesperson said.