Telstra Health Corus empowers patient centred data flow

Healthcare has undergone a significant transformation. The old approach that resulted in patients having to provide the same information repeatedly as they move between different practitioners is giving way to a more connected experience. The federal government has taken steps through initiatives such as My Health Record, but a fully connected health experience will depend on new technology and standards.

The Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard was first put into practice by the Obama administration in the United States as part of the Affordable Care Act. FHIR is a single standard that enables healthcare providers to communicate patient records, interaction records and observations. However, there are legacy systems with their own data models and information sharing protocols.

Telstra Health has been trying to help solve these challenges for over a decade. Farhoud Salimi, the Chief Technology Officer at Telstra Health, has seen these challenges first-hand over the last 20 years through his local and global experience in the healthcare sector.

"Corus is about rethinking the primary care and aged care ecosystem to move from being practice-centric to patient-centric. The vision is for data to move with the patient through the ecosystem. This is where interoperability standards and data standards come into play."

Corus is the first visible outcome of Telstra Health's multi-year modernisation. It is built to global interoperability standards, informed by real‑world requirements across geographies and jurisdictions. Salimi described it as a "platform of platforms" and said Corus is built on a carefully selected set of technologies that create a care intelligence ecosystem.

The core concept of Corus is that data moves with the patient through a connected fabric. Whether you're seeing a GP, allied health professional, or specialist, or systems that use FHIR like My Health Record, the right data is available when a patient sees the clinician at the point of care.

A further benefit of Corus is that it enables public health administrators to create a longitudinal view of population health to identify emerging trends and opportunities to improve health services. But creating a platform that enables those benefits is challenging.

"Most of the hospitals have their own EMRs [electronic medical records]. Some states have multiple EMRs with a health information exchange sitting across that integrates into My Health Record," explained Salimi.

Interoperability is key

Rather than duplicating or trying to replace those systems, Corus has an enterprise 'data spine' (Corus iX) that enables reporting, predictive insights, AI clinical summaries, and population health tools. The platform is built on Smile OmniVera HDP, a FHIR native health data platform. It provides a governed, standards-based foundation for sharing information securely and in near real time across hospitals, primary care, aged care, community services, diagnostics, pharmacy and government programs.

Telstra Health worked with clinicians and allied health specialists through an external advisory panel that engaged community health, primary and specialist care, and aged‑care facilities. The panel identified over 260 pain points in current workflows and product usage. Each pain point was then addressed with "painkillers" that the design team incorporated into Corus. Clinicians reviewed prototypes as they were built, offering day‑to‑day operational insight.

"We focused on day-to-day issues like information gaps which then cause manual workarounds, delays in providing care, retesting, or chasing down data from other providers. When information doesn't get to the right person at the right time, it can lead to poor clinical outcomes," said Salimi.

With AI at the top of almost every technology agenda, it's not surprising that Salimi and his team are looking at where it can be used to enhance Corus and the patient experience.

"As part of our development, we're enabling capabilities to be turned on at the right points in the workflow. We have partnerships with some of the biggest AI providers. Where specific agents exist on the platform, customers can choose which agents they use in which part of the workflow. They can choose whether to use a summarisation agent, an agent to dial out and call for appointments, or other functions. All the models that will be plumbed into our platform will act and run on our system with access to our data," Salimi explained.

While administrative activities are a good candidate for the use of AI, Salimi was quick to note that any clinical uses will be TGA approved.

Telstra Health is planning several releases of Corus over the next two years. The first release, which will be out later this year, is a care coordination, care pathways, and a population health platform. This is mostly targeted at big health service providers or health services. There will be two major releases next year, targeted at allied health and primary care, followed by community and specialty care. Aged care will follow in 2028.

Looking ahead, Salimi said one of the core principles is not to build for today, but to build for the future.

"We are creating a connected, single trusted view of the data across the health ecosystem. We want individuals to have a significant amount of engagement and control over health information and decisions," said Salimi.

The vision, he added, is not to be talking about interoperability of healthcare records and having to push records from system A to system B.

"We want it to be expected that the patient will move from provider to provider, with appropriate consent."

Telstra Health's Corus platform is redefining how Australian health services share and utilise patient data. The focus on patient‑centric flow, secure consent and future‑proof design means the platform will grow with evolving standards and emerging technologies to ensure every move a patient makes through the health ecosystem is supported by the right information at the right time.