For 20 years, the promise of digital health has rested on the electronic health record. That promise is finally arriving; Australia's digital health standards are maturing to the point where health information can be safely and reliably exchanged across the patient journey. At the same moment, AI is transforming how that data is captured, processed and acted upon.

This presentation explores what happens when these 2 trends collide. We'll look at national initiatives accelerating standards adoption, including the sparked FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) accelerator, and examine real examples of FHIR improving data quality and powering decision-support tools. From there, we turn to AI itself – machine learning, natural language processing and generative AI – and how each depends on the interoperable data that standards make possible.

The result isn't 2 parallel stories one: better plumbing making smarter tools possible, and smarter tools raising the bar for what that plumbing needs to deliver.