The NHR initiative seeks to unify the Commonwealth, states and territories in a nationwide health and hospital system overhaul.

The EDW program, one of many elements, will ensure the data collection and storage facilities for a range of key health-related data sets are in place to support the NHR.

The EDW will also provide access to key common and agency specific data collections; provide the tools for a range of data analysis, modelling and forecasting activities; and ensure activity based funding-related data transfer between the relevant national, state and territory agencies. The data sets involved in the data warehousing program are sizable.

The Department of Health and Ageing, the Independent Hospital Pricing Authority and related agencies' data sources amount to some 16TB at present with expected capacity requirements in five years equalling 80TB.

Some 40 plus per cent of this data is Medicare benefits-related, followed by aged care at 26 per cent and acute care at 19 per cent. Anticipated annual data growth rates are set at 10 per cent through to 2021.