CIO Interview: Our digital health system

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Picture: Stella Ward

CIO interview by Stella Ward, chief digital officer, Canterbury and West Coast DHBs

As part of our series of columns from health CIOs, Stella Ward describes how needing to rebuild many facilities post-earthquake has led to a digital transformation for Canterbury and West Coast DHBs.

Health is about people caring for people. Canterbury and West Coast District Health Boards are currently in a period of digital transformation, bringing to life technology and system solutions that support opportunities to improve the patient journey and enhance clinical and operational effectiveness (and, in so doing, release more time for patient care).

Our vision is one that is fundamentally patient-centric. We want to use technology to support health workers to deliver patient care that is safe, effective, efficient and enhances the patient experience. Any deployment of new technologies in our health system needs to be based on clinical and business benefit.

Achieving our vision also requires a combination of automation, innovation, health and business analytics, and change management. Getting there will require a planned and coordinated multi-year programme of work, and our strategy is underpinned by a principle of evolution not revolution – as well as introducing exciting technologies we want to better utilise our existing technology investment.

Post-earthquake opportunity

The volume of facilities’ development post-earthquake has provided an opportunity to think about how we could achieve this through a coherent, coordinated and well communicated IT structure: a digital hospital.

We have established user groups to look at every conceivable aspect of technology in the hospital. Digital initiatives that have already been implemented as part of this work include:

• integrated systems that provide real-time clinical information across different departments, including electronic medical records, E-meds and referrals
• real-time location systems (tracking)
• unified communication systems
• roll-out of mobile devices as a tool to carry out our clinical work
• videoconferencing.

Canterbury DHB has also created Via Innovation – an innovation unit set up to encourage designers of smart tech to partner with us. They get to road test their product in a real and demanding environment, and we get the benefit of their brains and expertise, sometimes as a world first.

The following are examples of this innovation that were first conceived in the fertile test bed of Canterbury:

• Celo – A secure mobile-device based app that allows information to be securely exchanged between clinicians and incorporated into the central health record. The key to its success – no data is held on the device itself, which means a lost phone doesn’t have the potential to breach a patient’s privacy.
• Cortex – another mobile app designed for use at the bedside. It creates a single set of notes and enables tests to be ordered, tasks to be assigned and workflows to be created without leaving the bedside.

Patient and provider experience driving strategy

Underpinning all of our deliverables, future ideas and plans is the Information System Strategy, which was commissioned with support from the Canterbury Clinical Network District Alliance and the South Island Regional Alliance with our four partner South Island DHBs.

The patient and provider experience is the driver behind the strategy which is based on the following principles:

• System information technology planning and decisions enable ‘one team’.
• Data is our system taonga. The value of the data is recognised and protected.
• Our system is digitised, standardised, measurable and can be analysed for continuous improvement.
• System partners are aligned to make decisions based on what is best for the individual and whānau and best for system as a whole.
• Systems are designed to be future-proofed, secure and optimised for users and support a paper-lite approach.

Part of my role as chief digital officer is to guide the implementation of this strategy and the process of working towards fully integrated workflows, as people traverse the spectrum of health-disability-social services from provider to provider.

A collaborative approach

A key enabler to achieving our strategy is collaboration and partnering – as the technologists we need to co-design with our end users to develop the tools they need to do their work.

We can’t deliver the right solutions without working well with the vendor community, which is why we have developed a series of partnerships/relationships with key suppliers of the technology. By moving to a collaborative approach we can deliver better value and also influence the way the technology is developed.

Another core part of my role is to constantly be looking three to five years ahead at what technologies are around the corner, and what impact they may have on healthcare.

We may not yet be ready to embrace robots delivering medications or meals, but technology will play a large part of the future as we move towards fully integrated systems and a paper-lite digital environment. It is an exciting time!

Stella Ward is the chief digital officer for the Canterbury and West Coast DHBs