IHI (Individual Healthcare Identifier) Guide

Healthcare identifiers are an important foundation of the My Health Record system which is run by the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA). The My Health Record system uses healthcare identifiers, as opposed to an individual’s Medicare number, to provide greater certainty that the right information is attributed to the right individual.

To maintain the level of certainty, a patient’s IHI details are not able to be manually entered into Dispense Works – they are to be retrieved using patient demographic information.

Searching for Patient IHI

In Dispense Works, the required patient demographic information required to retrieve an IHI are indicated by black labels:

Given Name(s)
Family Name
Date of Birth
Gender
Medicare/DVA card number - see note

Note: If the patient is not eligible for a Medicare or DVA card then the patient’s IHI can be retrieved/validated through an address search. The address that is used must be the one they have registered with the HI service – this may be different from their current address and should be confirmed with the patient if an IHI is unable to be found.

To retrieve a patient’s IHI in Dispense Works:

Search for a patient using Patient Search
Select Edit to open Patient Maintenance for an existing patient

Select Add to create a new patient
Enter all available patient demographic information – black labels indicate IHI requirements.

Click Refresh to search the HI service or Save and Dispense Works will automatically check for an IHI if the mandatory fields have been completed.

Dispense Works will retrieve and validate the information from the HI Service displaying the IHI number, IHI/Record Status, and Last Checked (Time and Date).

Each time a change is made to a mandatory field in patient details, the IHI details will be automatically revalidated when saving the changes.

If an IHI has not been validated for 48 hours, Dispense Works will automatically revalidate the IHI Status and Record Status with the HI Service when the patient is selected.

This is a requirement by the Australian Digital Health Agency to ensure details are valid and up to date.