The online Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits

The Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits lists those medicines subsidised by the Australian Government, and the conditions and circumstances under which they can be prescribed. A complex and highly technical 600 page manual, the freely distributed (and expensive) hard copy version of the Schedule needed to be replaced by a range of new electronic products generated - for the first time - from an electronic publishing system. These products included Health Professional and Consumer web sites, plus the entire Schedule for PDAs.

A critical factor in the move to electronic distribution was the urgent need to change from updating and redistributing the Schedule every four months, to monthly updates.

SMS took a user-centred approach, to determine in detail the needs, wants and expectations of health professionals and consumers. The designs were prototyped and tested extensively with key stakeholders and end users. Redesign work took place prior to the graphic designers putting the final polish on the site. SMS maintained the flow of information between stakeholders, web developers, graphic designers and project management to ensure smooth delivery on target. We provided information architecture, user-centred design and stakeholder engagement guidance to support the overall project delivery.

SMS made several recommendations over a 12 month period to the initial release of pbs.gov.au:

• Prioritise user engagement from the earliest stage of the project; 
• Future-proof the solution: produce standards-compliant XML; 
• Think laterally about delivery: look at PDA and offline dynamic website options; 
• Be proactive within the bounds of what is known to work, yet be a leader within your field: while other projects have been talking about eHealth initiatives for the last couple of years, SMS helped DoHA’s PharmBiz project to deliver real solutions.
  

Around the time of the public release of pbs.gov.au: 

• Peak health industry bodies, such as the AMA and Pharmacy Guild have accepted the transition of the Schedule of Pharmaceutical Benefits onto the web 
• Choice Magazine’s website identified the exposure of medicine pricing information as a high priority for government, to which to pbs.gov.au service provides a key enabler to achieve this 
• For the first time, Australian consumers have access to a definitive Government source of medicine information

The new service has also generated considerable publicity, including, 2 days before the projected public release of the site, pbs.gov.au was mentioned on Sunrise as the definitive place for Australian medicine pricing information.