A discovery of incompatibility with national specifications has led to the temporary stoppage of the trial operation of the electronic health record project of the federal government. 

The National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) stopped rolling out primary care desktop software on January 20, 2012 at most of the trial sites, 10 sites to be exact, after running into problems connected to the November 2011 update of national specifications.

This will further affect the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record project, which is set to receive federal funds of $466 million for two years as part of the aim to fight chronic and preventable disease.

The specific details of the problems have not been revealed. The affected sites, mostly Wave 1 and Wave 2 sites, include Inner East Melbourne Medicare Local, Accoras in Brisbane South, Calvary Health Care ACT, the Northern Territory Department of Health and Families, Cradle Coast Electronic Health Information Exchange in Tasmania, Brisbane's Mater Misericordiae Health Services, Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local, Hunter Urban Medicare Local, St. Vincent and Mater Health Sydney and Greater Western Sydney.

Only the Fred IT group and Medibank Private sites and the Defence Department's Joint e-Health Data and Information appear safe and unaffected.

NEHTA anticipates going through a contract renegotiation to recover what it can and resolve the problem of data migration to the national system, which is scheduled to go live July 1, 2012.

Asked with specific questions about the matter, a NEHTA spokesman merely confirmed the “pause” in the implementation of the primary care desktop software development," saying the government agency was “acting” on the situation.