Guest Editorial

This edition of Health Care and Informatics Review Online provides readers with the full papers accepted at the recent annual Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ) 2006 Conference and Exhibition 2006, held 9-11 August 2006 at the Aotea Centre, Auckland, New Zealand. The Conference theme was Primary Care and Beyond: Building the e-Bridge to Integrated Care. This highly successful conference was attended by over 300 guests and exhibitors and remains the largest health informatics conference in New Zealand.

HINZ and Health Care and Informatics Review Online are excited to be working together to provide a publication forum for students and practitioners undertaking research in health informatics in New Zealand. This year’s papers were of outstanding quality and provided conference attendees, and now Health Care and Informatics Review Online readers, with an excellent overview of the current issues in health informatics in New Zealand and overseas, with a specific focus on Primary Care. All 14 full papers submitted to the conference are included in this edition.

The increasing focus of the health sector in New Zealand on primary care has raised significant issues in information management that require innovative solutions, developed within New Zealand to meet our local and specific needs. These innovations are evident through the content of the papers and presentations from the conference. Using health informatics solutions to improve the quality and efficiency of care is an evident theme across many of the papers, particularly noted in Hynes paper on using information for practice change.

The considerable number of papers submitted outlining the work of practitioners in health informatics is indicative of the increasing maturity of health informatics in New Zealand. Of particular note are the papers that cover the wider view of health informatics, such as Day’s paper on change management through leadership and Warren’s paper on IT empowered consumers. Ongoing and increasing issues with the management of data are a focus in papers from Peck, Engelbrecht, Tretiakov and my own paper, along with the associated security issues as discussed in the paper from Brooks.

This year’s conference saw nine PhD students present their excellent work and I trust that next year’s conference has so many PhD students that their own forum is warranted.

I am sure you will find this edition of Health Care and Informatics Review Online highly informative. I encourage you to contact the authors of the included papers for further discussion on topics that interest you and I look forward to seeing you present your own paper at next year’s conference, to be held in October 2007.

Dr Karolyn Kerr
Chair
Health Informatics New Zealand