HBA leads with 'pseudo' Web services

23.01.2006
Despite having to deal with legacy applications for claims processing, Australian health insurer HBA has taken a leading position with open information interchange in line with the Health Insurance Commission's (HIC) specifications, according to CIO Peter Powell.

After separating from AXA three years ago, HBA has established its own core back-end system and successfully migrated it from a mainframe to Oracle on Sun.

In parallel with that transformation, Powell said HBA has taken a leading position developing software for HIC's Eclipse project which will allow better access to data between hospitals and insurers.

"We worked with HIC to do the first round of testing [which] covered claims submitted by providers and enquiries to validate the member," Powell said, adding that since Eclipse went live in 2004, HBA has processed 45 percent of all claims made through HIC.

With the legacy system in place, Powell said HBA had to create transactions as "pseudo services" - not exactly Web services but a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous services.

Eclipse promises to reduce processing time and the amount of effort to key claims into systems as a lot still come in via fax.