Frequently asked questions

Healthcare integration connects the separate systems a health organisation runs — pathology, radiology, hospital, GP and register systems — so clinical data flows between them accurately, securely and in real time. Done well, it eliminates re-keying, reduces clinical risk from missing information, and lets each system do what it's best at. Done badly, it's the source of most "the system is down" calls in healthcare IT.

An HL7 interface is a live connection between two healthcare systems that exchanges structured clinical messages — results, orders, admissions, demographics — using the HL7 standard. HL7 v2 remains the workhorse of Australian healthcare messaging. We've been building and running HL7 interfaces since 1990, including the pathology interfaces feeding the National Cancer Screening Register.

FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is the modern API-based interoperability standard from HL7 International. It's the right choice for new APIs, portals and app integration. But "instead of" is usually the wrong frame — most real Australian healthcare environments run HL7 v2 and FHIR side by side for years. We design for that reality: FHIR where it adds value, v2 where it's already working, and clean translation between the two.

Yes — terminology is where integration becomes meaningful. We work daily with SNOMED CT and LOINC for clinical coding, and with OMOP/OHDSI data models where clinical data needs to be research-ready or AI-ready.

It means we're a recognised partner of InterSystems, building our product solutions on InterSystems IRIS, IRIS for Health and HealthShare Patient Index — with direct access to InterSystems engineering when projects demand it. You get specialists who ship on the platform, not generalists learning it on your budget.

IRIS combines a high-performance database, an integration engine and analytics in one platform. Fewer moving parts means fewer failure points, lower licensing and infrastructure cost, and one throat to choke when something needs tuning. For healthcare, IRIS for Health adds native HL7, FHIR and terminology support — interoperability is built in, not bolted on.

Yes. A significant share of our work is taking over, stabilising and modernising existing InterSystems (IRIS, Caché, Ensemble) applications where the original developers have moved on. If you're running legacy InterSystems technology and have hit a wall, that's squarely our territory.

Under contract to Telstra Health, we designed, built, delivered and maintain all of the NCSR's external connection interfaces — pathology laboratories, Medicare, OCR/scanning, mail house systems and the client access portal. We've been engaged on the project for ten years, since its inception. More at ncsr.gov.au.

Yes — cancer registers, chronic disease registers and screening platforms are a core specialty. We bring the architecture patterns proven at national scale down to state, network and organisational registers, including the integration, terminology and reporting layers that make a register genuinely useful.

Absolutely. We've been building custom systems for SMEs since 1985. If your business has hit a wall with existing systems — performance, reliability or cost — we build the application that gets you through it. Healthcare is our deepest domain, not our only one.

With a conversation about the wall you've hit. We scope the simplest intervention that removes the constraint, give you an honest read on effort and risk, and start with a well-defined first deliverable rather than a monolithic contract. Call 1800 468 478 or use the contact form.

Yes — and we'd argue that's the point. Ten years of continuous engagement on the NCSR reflects how we work: design, build, deliver and maintain. We stay accountable for the systems we ship.