For Victorian public hospitals
Software for Victorian hospitals whose VINAH and VEMD submissions still get done by hand.
For metropolitan hospitals, regional services and rural health alliances where the patient administration system holds part of the picture, the EMR holds another, and the state government collections (VINAH, VEMD and the rest of the reporting tail) get assembled by a person every reporting period. We build the database underneath. A single source of truth that the state collections read from, instead of three systems each holding a different version of the same encounter.
What we hear from health information managers and informatics leads
Health information managers describe the same five problems at every Victorian public health service we sit down with. None of them are the PAS's fault on its own, or the EMR's. They are what happens when each clinical and admin system owns its own view of the encounter and nobody owns the view across them. The state collections still expect one consistent submission every period.
- VINAH and VEMD submissions still get done by hand. Clinical staff finish the encounter in the EMR. The PAS holds the demographics and the encounter spine. The state submission gets stitched together in spreadsheets at the end of the reporting period, run through a validation tool, fixed, run again, submitted, returned with rejections, fixed again. Someone in HIM or decision support spends a week of every period on this loop. Read the VINAH and VEMD reporting integration write-up.
- HL7 messages disagree about who the patient is. ADT messages flow between PAS, EMR, pathology, radiology and the data warehouse. Field mappings drift. UR numbers get re-issued. The same patient appears twice with two different identifiers. Nobody finds out until the monthly reconciliation against the state collection refuses to balance, and the data quality query (DQQ) lands two weeks after the submission window closed.
- Submission returns land a fortnight after the period closed. The state collection comes back with rejections and DQQs. By then the staff who entered the source data have moved on to the next period. The HIM team reconstructs what happened from logs, fixes the records, resubmits, waits for the next return, and hopes the same fields will not break again next month.
- On-call payment workflows live in spreadsheets. Roster, on-call hours, callback hours, recall rules per award, allowance entitlements. Calculated by hand each fortnight from rosters that the manager downloaded from one system, payroll exports from another, and an enterprise agreement clause nobody can find. Disputes from the medical workforce land back at the same person every cycle.
- State reporting sits on systems never designed to feed it. The PAS, the EMR, the departmental clinical systems and the financial system were each chosen to do their own job well. The state government collections were not part of any of those original briefs. Health information managers fill the gap with manual extracts, Access databases built years ago by a former HIM analyst who has since left, and Excel files that one person maintains. When that person takes leave, the reporting halts. For rural alliances feeding multiple member services through one HIM team, the gap stretches across every site.
None of these get fixed by replacing the PAS or the EMR. They get fixed by deciding which system owns which field and putting a real database underneath that captures the truth across the clinical systems and the reporting layer. That is the work we do. See how we approach the HL7 and integration side when the PAS, EMR and departmental stack already exists, or browse our full custom-software services for the broader picture. For smaller community and clinic-based clinical data, our allied health software page covers the same database-first answer at practice scale.
Products and tools
VINAH automation
VINAH Manager
Our portal-automation product for the Victorian Integrated Non-Admitted Health collection. Built originally to take VINAH submissions off the spreadsheet-and-validate-and-resubmit loop. It pulls from the source clinical and admin systems, validates against the current data dictionary, queues the submission and tracks the return. The HIM team reviews a dashboard instead of preparing the file.
VEMD automation
VEMD Editor
Our portal-automation product for the Victorian Emergency Minimum Dataset. Same pattern as VINAH Manager applied to the emergency-department reporting tail. Validation rules update with the data dictionary, returns get tracked back to the source records, and the reporting period stops swallowing a week.
HL7 and FHIR
Message generation, routing and reconciliation
HL7 v2 message generation, ADT routing between PAS, EMR and the data warehouse, and the migration path to FHIR for the systems and collections that have moved. Reconciliation against the state collections so the rejections that used to land a fortnight late get caught the night the message fails validation.
PAS, EMR, departmental systems
The clinical and admin spine
iPM (PAS), BOSSnet (DMR), Cerner (EMR), pathology, radiology, theatre and outpatient systems. We integrate them as the source of truth they already are, without trying to replace them. The bits the PAS and EMR do not natively show (cross-system reconciliation, the state-reporting view, on-call and roster reconciliation) live in the database underneath.
Reporting and decision support
The data warehouse, Power BI, the executive dashboard
Operational metrics that decision support, the executive sponsor and the board will actually open. Throughput by ward, length of stay by DRG, on-time submission rates by collection, data quality query trends. Built into the management cycle so the conversation runs on numbers rather than the last manual extract.
The plumbing
The custom layer
Most of the value sits in what your service has always done in one person's head, in shared drives, or in an Access database built years ago by a former HIM analyst who has since left. Workflow logic, payment calculations, rostering rules, the approval gates the executive director cares about. We model that explicitly in the database so the service runs the same way on the day a key person takes leave.
Recent work / Victorian public health services
A week of HIM time per period, back. Submissions now run nightly, unattended.
A Victorian public health service was submitting VINAH reports manually through the state government portal. Hours of HIM time every reporting period, compliance risk on every submission, and the same fields breaking on the same returns each month. The same shape of problem turned up on the emergency-department side at a second Victorian public health service, and again across a regional rural health alliance feeding multiple member services. Each had tried checklists and dedicated admin staff. The manual step was the problem.
We built automated HL7 generation with overnight validation and error tracking. That work became VINAH Manager on the non-admitted side and VEMD Editor on the emergency side. Returns that used to land a fortnight after the period closed now get caught the night the data fails validation, and the staff time those rejections used to consume came back. Read the regulatory reporting case study for the longer write-up.
Read the regulatory reporting case study Browse all case studies
The engagement path
Discovery call
30 minutes with Marty (founder, doing this since 2007). You describe the service, the systems, the bits that actually hurt. We tell you honestly whether what you are describing sounds like an integration job, a portal-automation product fit (VINAH or VEMD), a custom-software job, or a sharper PAS-to-EMR setup that would solve more for less. Hospital procurement is its own world. If your service runs an approved-vendor list or a panel arrangement, tell us upfront and we will work alongside an approved integrator or apply through your procurement process. No pitch.
Systems diagnostic
A fixed-price piece of work. Most informatics leads we meet have been burned by an IT project that stalled in the security review, the privacy review or the data-handling review, so the diagnostic exists to put a real number and the data-handling story on the table together. We map where each piece of clinical and admin data lives, who edits it, where it is hosted, who has access, and which fields actually matter for VINAH, VEMD, on-call payments and the executive view. You finish with a written diagnostic you can forward to the privacy officer, the chief information security officer or the executive sponsor, a prioritised list of fixes and a scoped estimate.
Integration or custom build
Most public health services need both. The integration layer puts the PAS, EMR, departmental systems and the data warehouse on speaking terms via a real database. The custom build models the work that does not fit any of those tools: VINAH and VEMD submission, on-call payment calculation, the executive dashboard, the privacy and access gates the security team cares about. We build them in stages so the service sees value inside the first reporting period, and the HIM and informatics teams see something that gives them a week of every period back.
Ongoing support
We do not build and walk away. Vendors change APIs, the state collections update their data dictionaries, the privacy reviewers come back with new requests, your service grows. We stay on as a small ongoing engagement, usually a few hours a month, so the system gets fixed when it breaks and grows when the service grows. The same person who built it picks up the phone.
We have been running this engagement model since 2007. See how we work.
Not sure whether you need custom software, a VINAH or VEMD product, or sharper integration?
Start with a 30-minute discovery call. We will tell you honestly. Most Victorian public health services we talk to are one good integration away from a reporting period that does not swallow a week of HIM time. And if the diagnostic finds nothing worth fixing, you walk away with a clean bill of health for your systems.