Pathology e-requesting in Australia, and how Eirly Health differs

In e-requesting, also called e-ordering, the practitioner's clinical information system sends the request to a laboratory electronically. Primary health network guidance describes a few practical points: the practice software has to be set up by the lab, the lab has to be able to receive the request, a paper form is still printed so the client can choose another provider, and each electronic request goes to one provider only.

Electronic requests also support results being uploaded to My Health Record by the lab. The Australian Digital Health Agency publishes the current list of participating software and providers, which changes, so check it directly.

HL7 Australia's AU eRequesting Implementation Guide is a FHIR-based specification for placing and accessing electronic requests. Release 1 covers pathology and medical imaging requests in community care. Reports, specimen collection and booking are outside its scope.

For the older HL7 v2 messaging used between systems and labs, see the HL7 pathology guide.

This section describes Eirly Health, not the standards. Eirly Health is a platform and REST API for ordering pathology and specialist tests. A practitioner or healthtech creates a referral on the platform or through the API, and the referral is issued as a PDF that is delivered to the client. Commercial and Medicare bulk-bill referrals can be ordered in one workflow, with Medicare under the practitioner's own provider number.

Eirly Health is not described here as a conformant e-requesting provider, and it does not replace the e-requesting built into practice software. It is a different route: one platform across labs, with structured results returned through the API.

See the practitioner platform, or the pathology API if you are building a product.