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Telehealth - Where are we Heading?

New Zealand’s health sector is beginning to change the way health services are delivered and how the population receive those services.  Our final seminar for 2009 will look at how telehealth is being used as a tool for providing access to health information and treatment for a dispersed population. What direction could New Zealand move over the next  few years regarding the national policy for telehealth, the methodologies for treating of patients remotely, lessons learned from current projects, and what is happening in Australia and internationally.

Where:  Wellington Convention Centre

Speakers

Dr Michael Sullivan is a Consultant Paediatric Oncologist with the Canterbury District Health Board, an Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Otago, and the Director of Research of the Children’s Cancer Research Group at the university of Otago. He trained in Science and Medicine at the University of Otago and completed Specialist training in Paediatrics in 1991. He went on to train in Paediatric Oncology and in 1998 completed a PhD in Cancer Molecular Biology in the Cancer Genetics Laboratory, University of Otago. Dr Sullivan’s research group is investigating the biological nature of childhood cancers to identify new therapeutic targets and molecular profiles that might predict clinical outcome. More recently he has developed a research programme investigating the long-term effects of cancer treatment in cancer survivors and over the last 5 years has led the development of a national Late Effects Assessment Programme for childhood cancer survivors. His major clinical interests are the management of childhood solid tumors, and the late effects of cancer. Dr Sullivan has also taken a national leadership role in the development of Telemedicine. Since 2001 he has been Chair of the New Zealand TelePaeditrics Service and led its development from a small Paediatric service into a national real-time telemedicine network.

Michael will be speaking on Developing Collaborative Health Networks and Communities of Interest - Principles and Practice of TeleMedicine.

Dr Laurie Wilson received a PhD in cosmic ray physics from the University of Sydney, and after a brief period at the University of  Oxford Department of Atmospheric Physics, began a career working at the interface of technology and medicine.  He contributed to many advances in medical ultrasound, especially tissue characterisation and Doppler, and later worked in knowledge based medical image analysis.  From 1989 to 2008 he was a research scientist in Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, where he led research groups in image analysis, eHealth, Telemedicine and Human Factors.  Since retiring from full time work in 2008, he continues to contribute to telehealth through a part time CSIRO post-retirement fellowship and through the Australasian TeleHealth Society, which was formed through his efforts and of which he is currently Honorary Secretary.

Laurie will be speaking on Telehealth in Australia, recent advances and future outlook. Australia has a long history of innovation in telehealth, but lack of a national outlook and a limited telecommunications infrastructure have often prevented innovation on a sufficient scale to overcome Australia’s large distances. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), has recently demonstrated how advanced networks and user interfaces can assist in delivering complex health services in emergency and intensive care, and an improvement in infrastructure should result from the Australian Government’s recently announced National Broadband Network. The formation in 2008 of the Australasian TeleHealth Society (ATHS) will provide a focus for the telehealth community in Australia and New Zealand, as well as a point of contact for international linkages. In 2010, Australia will host the annual scientific meeting of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH) in Perth.

Don Lemieux received a BSc in Chemistry from Northland College, Ashland, Wisconsin, and spend two years as a medical student at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. He is currently employed as Health Studies Lecturer, Waiariki Institute of Technology, Rotorua.  He is of American Indian descent and prior to moving to New Zealand, lived in Alaska for nine and a half years, first employed as an HIV/AIDS Health Educator through the Alaska Native Health Board and later, employed as a secondary math and science teacher in the rural Yupik Eskimo village of Akiak.  He believes the Alaska Community Health Aide model of care and its use of telemedicine technology may provide a potential solution to health care staffing shortages in New Zealand.

Don will be speaking on Telehealth and its Impact on Health Care Delivery, based on findings from the Alaska Federal Health Care Access Network (AFHCAN) Telemedicine Project. By area, Alaska is the largest state of the United States of America, covering 1,717,854 square kilometres. It is also predominately rural with a population of 626,932, of which approximately 16% are of Alaska Native/American Indian (AN/AI) descent. The US federal government, as part of its trust responsibility to provide care for the Indigenous population continues to serve the health care needs of AN/AI’s in cooperation with various tribal corporations and entities.  One such tribal entity, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) was formed in December 1997 to manage state wide health services for Alaska Natives. ANTHC is the managing partner of AFHCAN, one of the largest telemedicine programmes in the United States.

Ross McKenna joined the Ministry of Health as the Programme Director for the Connected Health Programme. In June 2009 he was appointed the role of Portfolio Manager - Health System Infrastructure, in the Ministry of Health’s Information Strategy and Architecture Group.   His experience includes programme management and IT, and telecommunications technical and management consultancy.   He’s worked at senior levels in New Zealand and Australia in the telecommunications, banking and gambling (regulatory) industries, in both public and private sectors. Before joining the Ministry in 2007, Ross successfully completed a two year contract with the Department of Internal Affairs to establish an Electronic Monitoring Service for New Zealand’s 21,000 gaming machines – one of the New Zealand Government’s most successful major projects. Ross has presented papers to national and international forums on ICT topics and has established and run ICT training programmes for the New Zealand Institute of Management.

Ross will be speaking on The Role of Telehealth in Emerging Models of Care.

Gayle Humphrey, from the Auckland District Health Board, will be speaking about the ASSET programme. The ASSET (Application of Self Management Systems Evaluation Trial) Programme is a significant step towards the validation of a number of elements of Government policy in respect to person centric care and shifting the burden of care away from hospitals. The principal objective of the Programme is to assess the impact of providing people with long term conditions with the ability to monitor their own vital signs, with their data being automatically transmitted to their care teams. The expectation is that this will promote the development of a more integrated approach to care provision and will enable the earlier detection of health crises, leading to reduced presentation at Emergency Departments and unplanned admissions to hospital.

Dr Karen Day is a lecturer in health informatics at the University of Auckland at which the National Institute for Health Innovation (NIHI) is based. She’s interested in how people use information, the principles of information management and the technology. She’s a member of the HINZ Executive Committee and Chair of the HINZ Education Working Group. She’s fascinated by how we adapt to the changes brought about by the introduction of IT in healthcare. This interest extends to how people who become patients may want to, or do, use health information about themselves or about a condition they or a friend or family member may have. Karen’s future research includes exploring how telemedicine and other aspects of health informatics can be used to increasingly bring people who are not clinically trained into the health knowledge network or scenario.

Karen’s talk will focus on how telemedicine supports person centric healthcare. It makes sense that people are equipped for self care and for healthcare services to be able to deliver care outside of traditional places like hospitals and consulting rooms. The challenge is to converge the complex worlds of healthcare and everyday life into a model of care that facilitates healthy outcomes.

Schedule

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