What’s holding NZ back from being truly agile?

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Picture: Ann-Marie Cavanagh, chief technology and digital services officer, Ministry of Health

Digital Vision: A regular column by Ann-Marie Cavanagh, Ministry of Health

The small New Zealand health sector means we have the potential to collaborate easily and become truly agile, but there are a few things to be considered or surmounted first.

Firstly, I’d like to wish everyone a healthy and successful 2019. Last year was a busy year for the Ministry and I hope everyone has come from the Christmas holiday refreshed and raring to go.

I expect this year to be no different, so for the first column of 2019 I thought it a good idea to reflect on the recent HiNZ conference.

Overall, what struck me was what a great opportunity it provided for networking. It was great catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a while and also connecting with people I have been meaning to meet but hadn’t just yet.

This is one of the benefits of the New Zealand sector: it is small enough that relationships can be made quickly and efficiently. This efficiency should see us being able to collaborate in ways that other jurisdictions would be envious of.

However, I wonder, given this natural advantage, whether we are really seeing the types of collaboration that you would expect in such a connected sector?

What are the challenges?

After two days at HiNZ, I came to the realisation that New Zealand has the real potential to be truly agile, but that a few things need to be considered or surmounted before we can get to that point.

First, there is a lot of local ‘flavour’ in our system – there are real regional and local differences. Christchurch’s needs are different to Auckland’s on many fronts and any solution needs to take these differences into account. While we are working in a small country, it is made up of many regions that are unique in their needs.

Second, in my view, we have currently a fairly fragmented technology landscape. The impact of this for both the healthcare professionals using the systems, and customers of health and disability services, are many.

Lastly, there is the factor of the type of leadership required to make the leap to agile. Leadership in this sense comes down to the choices we make, principles around the systems we design, information standards and the behaviours in the sector. Different styles of leadership and behaviours will be needed to enable agile.

What do we need to do?

Open finds and moving to an approach of testing and creating ‘safe-to-fail’ environments will be important.

Maintaining patient safety is critical and we cannot deviate from that; however, we need to think about how we innovate, test and learn, as well as ensuring we share our learnings, both good and bad, across the system.

This takes courage and a willingness to share, learn and listen from our collective perspectives and, where we can, forge a common path forward.

Ann-Marie Cavanagh is the Ministry of Health’s chief technology and digital services officer.

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