Minister predicts a people-powered revolution in health

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page

Picture: Health Minister David Clark speaking at the HealthTech Conference

eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

There’s a “people-powered revolution coming” in the health sector, Health Minister David Clark told attendees at the HealthTech Conference in Auckland today.

He said patients increasingly want services delivered via apps and smart devices.

“There’s a people-powered revolution coming. People using services have higher expectations; they want to improve their quality of life and engage with health in more convenient, timely ways,” said Clark.

The health system is responding by moving more care closer to where people live or work and taking advantage of opportunities offered by new and emerging technologies.

Clark said the recently announced Review into the New Zealand Health and Disability Sector will look at how to deliver a more patient-centred health system.

He said the health sector is currently focused on “buying widgets” rather than on delivering patient outcomes, as that is where the funding goes.

“What we need is a system focused on outcomes and patient experience,” he said.

Clark also said that the health system needs to be more responsive and that he is encouraged by the Ministry of Health’s redevelopment after a “tough time” in which there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the leadership.

“That’s starting to turn around and there’s some really promising things happening there and there’s an opportunity with the review to look afresh at how we do things,” he said.

Clark said the Ministry’s new Digital Health Strategy should be published “in coming months” and this will define standards for information and application architecture for collecting, sharing and storing health information.

A new identity management and integration service is also being defined and together these will act as building blocks towards the creation of a National Electronic Health Record.

He told conference attendees that if they want to innovate in line with government priorities they should focus on improving equity.

“We have an ageing population with more complex needs, an ageing workforce and the increasing burden of long-term conditions and inequality,” said Clark.

“Digital solutions can provide the tools to build a better, fairer system delivering more health services to more people for every health dollar available.”

Other priorities areas for the government are a focus on primary health care and prevention, public delivery of health services, mental health and child well-being.

“In order to meet all the need out there within the health dollar available we have to maximise the opportunity and that can only involve new ways of doing things,” Clark said.

He referenced five examples of innovative technologies already in place around the country.

These were an automatic pill dispenser used by Nurse Maude, patient portals being offered by more than 57 per cent of GPs, the first robot-assisted knee surgery in North Shore Hospital, telehealth technology used by the vast majority of DHBs and the telestroke service used to help regional stroke patients get diagnosed and treated as quickly as possible.

Clark told the conference that the challenge is to keep progressing.

“We need to keep progressing and we need to do this collaboratively to deliver better value to patients and society,” he said.

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page