On Tuesday, Premier Jeremy Rockliff announced Thursday's state budget would include $150 million to upgrade Tasmania's digital health infrastructure over the next four years, as part of the state's Digital Health Strategy.

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He said the upgrades would allow better communication and information sharing between hospitals, general practitioners, community health, allied health and specialist providers.

The announcement was welcomed by GPs, and doctors working in the state's hospitals, who said the overdue upgrades will reduce the duplication of services and improve patient flow.

Summerdale Medical Practice partner Dr Don Rose said doctors and health providers had been pushing for the upgrade for years.

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Doctors have wanted this for years, it is certainly long overdue," he said.

"Without a shared system, we can't get hold of the information we need to manage a person's health.

"This is sort of what the My Health Record was trying to do, but the My Health Record wasn't live, it was just a collection of records.

"We hope what is being put in place will be live and we'll have instant access."

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Dr Rose said with patient records spread across allied, primary and acute settings it was not uncommon for patients to undergo the same test more than once.

The commitment has also been welcomed by the Australian Medical Association with former Tasmanian president Dr Helen McArdle saying the database would benefit both patients and health providers.

"There's quite a number of areas where there's going to be a lot of positive outcomes," she said.

"One is getting patients into clinics, getting patients into hospital, but also ensuring that GPs are fully informed of what's happened while they've been in hospital and can pick up their patients much quicker once they're discharged," she said.

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She said the live information exchange would also improve patient safety and quality of care with information available to health professionals where and when they needed it.

Improving the state's digital network had been one of the issues Dr McArdle had sought to address during her term as AMA Tasmania president.

After standing aside from the role last month, Dr McArdle said she had been disappointed not to achieve the reform while in the role, but was pleased the government had finally chosen to address the issue.

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