Tasmanian Department of Health boosts services with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

During COVID-19, the Department of Health, Tasmania, was required to contribute citizen vaccination data to Services Australia’s national Australian Immunization Register (AIR) to securely monitor vaccination progress and manage the inventory. However, the department grappled with the vast amount of data being generated from AIR. Staff used spreadsheets for mundane tasks, which not only took a lot of time but was also error-prone. This scenario added to inefficiencies and reporting constraints, impacting the overall objective to manage the vaccination program successfully.

The health department envisioned unifying data for a truly proactive approach to optimize end-to-end patient care and speed up the pandemic response. The department wanted a modern data platform to integrate AIR with its existing Oracle Health Management Systems. The new platform needed to eliminate manual data processing for report generation to help the department provide advice and accurate data to the Tasmanian government daily.

The Department was already using Oracle Health Management System for Government Cloud Service and decided to deploy an application built on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to ensure a smooth sync of the vaccine outcome data with AIR and Services Australia.

It engaged Oracle Consulting to build the application using OCI Integration Services and deploy it on Oracle Autonomous Database.

With Integration Services, the department benefited from simplified data extraction capabilities and near real-time data integration between AIR and Oracle HMS. OIC streamlined hybrid integration and enabled the Department of Health to rapidly respond to the challenges of COVID-19.

The Department chose Oracle Autonomous Database to improve transaction processing with greater security thanks to self-encryption. The Department also needed to quickly create, update, and search case management data and chose Oracle APEX, a low-code application development framework on Oracle Autonomous Database, to enable health department staff to develop and deploy a data exchange system.

By moving the AIR application to OCI with Autonomous Database for transaction processing and integrating the data with Oracle Health Management Systems, the Department realized up to a 50% reduction in effort for the operational team.  The department now has an automated data exchange system for vaccine administration outcomes with Services Australia. This system allows for a near real-time exchange of data, which in turn allows for timely data reporting within the AIR platform. Additionally, the department now maintains an audit history to correct personal information.

The user interface was built using Oracle APEX, with Oracle Autonomous Database, and enables the department to quickly create, update, and search case management data to improve decision-making and healthcare services.

Oracle Consulting built the application using OCI Integration Services and deployed on Oracle Autonomous Database. With Integration Services, the department has benefited from simplified data extraction capabilities and near real-time data integration between AIR and Oracle HMS. Oracle Integration streamlined the hybrid integration and enabled the Department of Health to rapidly respond to the challenges of COVID-19.