Page 3696 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 September 2019
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(5) To what extent will the project’s deferral for three years impact on the economic value of the budget allocation for the project.
(6) What improvements will this proposed expenditure fund in public healthcare.
(7) What impact will the three years delay in its delivery cause to the implementation of those improvements.
Ms Stephen-Smith: The answer to the member’s question is as follows:
(1) The 2017-18 Budget originally allocated $398,000 for Protecting Canberrans from Infectious Diseases project.
(2) (a) The scope of the project was to procure and implement a new ACT Notifiable Diseases Solution (the Solution). The Solution will support the surveillance, investigation and public health management of notifiable diseases. Communicable disease surveillance is an ACT and Commonwealth legislative requirement.
(b) The objectives of the Solution are to enable the collection of high-quality notifiable disease surveillance data in a flexible and secure environment to:
• support the immediate requirements of public health management of notifiable communicable diseases in the ACT;
• inform targeted disease prevention and control programs in the ACT;
• facilitate the provision of timely information to government and the community on outbreaks programs; and
• enable ACT to comply with Commonwealth reporting requirements.
(3) The ACT Digital Health Strategy provides a set of guiding principles to ensure a consistent and structured approach to the delivery of digital health capabilities. Such principles include using integrated solution suites, leveraging existing investments and supporting integrated workflows.
Due to the significant interactions between the pathology service and the notification of infectious and notifiable diseases, it was important to understand the future state of the pathology laboratory information system procured prior to committing to a separate Solution for notifiable diseases.
This approach was also necessary as no recurrent funding was provided for the notifiable diseases Solution under the Protecting Canberrans from Infectious Diseases initiative.
(4) There has been no change to the expected scope and outcomes.
(5) The delay has not had an impact on the economic value of the budget allocation. Benefits were not financial, and no offsets or savings were associated with the business case.
(6) The expenditure will achieve the following benefits:
• it will make available good quality and reliable surveillance data that will inform disease control measures and ultimately benefit the health of the ACT population. This will in turn, reduce the burden on essential health services in the ACT, including reducing health associated costs; and
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