Reengineering the Healthcare Supply Chain in Australia: The PeCC Initiative

Abstract

Reengineering is about fundamentally rethinking and dramatically redesigning business processes in order to lower costs and increase quality, service and speed. Such transformation is required in many industries today, perhaps none more so than the health sector. One enabling mechanism to allow for such large-scale change is found in information systems developments, most notably that of electronic commerce (e-commerce), offering a range of solutions for improving healthcare management. This paper addresses the way in which the Australian health industry has grasped such opportunities for transforming itself through e-commerce strategies, allowing for improving cost-effective services to key stakeholders. A major achievement among a range of recent activities as outlined in the federal government’s report, From Telehealth to E-Health: The Unstoppable Rise of E-Health (Mitchell, 1999), is that of Australia’s first Internet trading community, The Project Electronic Commerce and Communication for Healthcare, otherwise known as PeCC, a key platform in transforming Australia’s health sector.