As part of funding in the 2023-24 Federal Budget, the Australian Government committed $15.7 million over two years to advance national health information sharing priorities. This included $9.3 million for the CSIRO to accelerate the development and adoption of national Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards for healthcare data exchange. An additional $1.9 million was provided in the 2024-25 Federal Budget.

CSIRO's Australian eHealth Research Center (AEHRC), on behalf of the consortium of the Department of Health, Disability and Aging (DHDA), the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), and HL7 Australia (HL7 AU), leads the development, management, and ongoing support of these standards via an Australian-first FHIR Accelerator – Sparked. 

Sparked brings together stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem to collaboratively develop and support the adoption of prioritized national FHIR standards, enabling seamless data exchange, better coordination between public and private health services nationwide, and safer, more effective care for all Australians.

Sparked is now entering its third year of operation and over this time has delivered through an open community process, AU Clinical Data for Interoperability, national SNOMED CT Value Sets to support the Data Models, including national SNOMED based Test Catalogs for Pathology and Diagnostic Imaging, National Core FHIR IGs, National eRequesting IG and AU Patient Summary IG. These have been delivered over 30 months in an open, collaborative process driven bottom up by the Community with Clinical Colleges, Medical Software Industry, Government Agencies, Consumers, researchers and clinicians. 

Now that a number of key foundations are in place, industry, government and clinicians are now looking to innovate and deliver value added tools using FHIR Smart Forms, Smart Apps and Clinical decision support tools.

Sparked is a case study in how to mobilise a large community to rapidly deliver standards, to ensure that change management and implementation commences at the start of standards development and not once the standard is published.