The Ministry of Health will spend $13.9million on a database project which may have a major impact on the health sector.

The database will be responsible for managing the identification numbers for patients and also the identities of medical practitioners. The database will manage shared health records which hold a summary of person’s health information that can be accessed by all clinicians and the patient themselves.

National Health IT Board Director, Graeme Osborne, “said shared care records would work only if practitioners could trust the data”.

If the National Health Index and Practitioner Index are not of higher quality then it will become more difficult to operate a shared record.

The current system is 17 years old and is not true 24x7. This system creates complexity because sometimes practitioners had to assign temporary numbers to the patients and then later reconcile those with their real numbers.

IBM has won the contract to develop the database and the ministry is seeking proposals from vendors to support and host it. The contract is worth $13.9m and the system is due to be completed by next year.

This database is expected to improve patient’s safety and reduce the back-office administration and system support cost each year.