The data standards challenge in aged and community care.

The Australian Health Ministers' Advisory Council has recently given in-principle endorsement to a strategic plan for information infrastructure development that identifies national data standards as one of the top 10 priorities for action. When developing information management systems it is important to remember that system interoperability is a necessary but not sufficient outcome of the informatics effort. The use of national data standards from the National Community Services Data Dictionary and the National Health Data Dictionary is vital to achieving semantic interoperability. The Institute is currently revising its electronic repository of endorsed data standards for health, community services and housing to comply with the revised international standard for metadata registries will (ISO/IEC 11179) and the new repository (known as METeOR) will assist with resolving conflicts arising from differing data requirements of different funding bodies. Statistical analysis of data is a crucial part of the use of data, and the use of data specifications which are consistent to and can be mapped to national standards is essential for research involving cross-program comparative analysis or data linkage. The Australian Government has also recognised the importance of the collaboration of researchers, better data linkage and the analysis of longitudinal data to produce evidence which may promote ageing well and ageing productively. It has funded the development of the Ageing Research Online website (www.aro.gov.au) which has the potential to increase awareness of ageing-related informatics projects and to connect researchers and practitioners.