Launched at the end of November, the pilot stage of the HealthPathways Provider Directory will test the system’s ability to manage provider information and publish it within HealthPathways.

The pilot will involve training the Hunter and New England HealthPathways (HNE) team to input all the relevant Colorectal providers into the directory and then working with them to prepare the data and publish it to two Colorectal Referrals page.

To kick off the pilot, Training Officer, Heather Pearce has developed an illustrated overview explaining how the system works and a set of step-by-step online guidelines for inputting and preparing the data.

“I envisage this training material will be used by the Writing Team as they work with administrators, and as an online guide for self-directed learning. The pilot is an opportunity to test the material’s accuracy and clarity, and for the HNE administrators to provide me with feedback so I can improve it,” says Heather.

The second phase of the pilot will be guided by technical writer, Graeme Wilson and involve refining and documenting the process and methodology the Writing Team will use to publish Provider Directory content directly into a HealthPathways website. It’s at this stage that the Streamliners project team will work with HNE to refine the publishing templates and output.

Project Manager, Matt Sinclair explains, “Although the pilot is limited to manually inputting provider information via the Provider Directory Administration Tool, Darrell Kilian’s team will be working hard on a bulk data import tool. If available in time, we may introduce it into the pilot once the core training and publishing functions are completed.”

All going well, the HNE pilot will be completed by early February, a pilot with Western Australia will begin in the new year, and the official launch of the live system to other HealthPathways regions will begin in April 2016.