Paper copies can be shredded
Recent changes to Health Insurance Commission (HIC) legislation allow for a practice to shred paper copies of requests once it has shown that the stringent requirements for electronic storage have been met. These requirements are laid out in the HIC's 'Notice of Information Technology (IT) Standards under the Electronic Transactions Act 1999' (IT Standard).

Long term storage is now practical
The National Pathology Accreditation Advisory Council (NPAAC) guidelines for the "Retention of Laboratory Records and Diagnostic Material" (3rd Edition 2002) now include request forms within the classification of the Patient Record. In some cases this means that request forms should be kept in a legible form for up to 25 years. Further, there has long been a legal argument that all documents relating to the provision of health services should be kept indefinitely. The NPAAC guidelines advise that electronic documents provide a practical means for long term storage: electronic documents are considered acceptable where the storage system meets the requirements of the IT Standard.

AutoSCAN complies with the IT Standard
The AutoSCAN system complies with the relevant criteria in the IT Standard for the purposes of Electronic Storage of Request forms. It stores a complete and unalterable copy of the request on permanent media as a PKI signed document using Certificates issued on behalf of the HIC by HeSA, the "Health e-Signature Authority".