CIO Interview: Technology as an enabler during a pandemic

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

In health, technology can give people access to information that helps them with important decisions about their care, and allow health professionals to collaborate with colleagues more efficiently. But like in any business, technology in health needs to have a specific purpose.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, technology had a clear purpose: connecting people to health professionals when they couldn’t easily do so face-to-face. The exceptional circumstances also sped up planned programmes such as telehealth, and triggered the rapid development of technology such as consumer-focused apps for contact tracing and sharing of information.

Going mobile
 
One example of technology adapted at speed was the Āwhina App. The Ministry of Health developed this to give health workers up-to-the-minute information on personal protective equipment, testing centres and alert levels during the COVID-19 crisis.

In Canterbury it is integrated with our Health Pathways (assessment, management and referral information about Canterbury health services for general practice teams and other community healthcare providers) and it was great to see the collaboration of our local IT vendors working together to deliver a great tool.  Canterbury DHB staff have taken up the app and so we will adapt it and continue to use it as a way of sharing non-COVID health information.
 
Another evolution that happened quickly because of COVID was the use of telehealth, or virtual health. It was the same as in every industry – people were on Team or Zoom meetings. There was a rapid and phenomenal shift. Our clinicians were seeing patients via Zoom or Teams as well as talking to them on the phone. 

We ran virtual ward rounds so health professionals could look at a patient’s records remotely. This meant patients got the best care, but we were able to limit the number of people in the clinical environment.  Multi-disciplinary care meetings, where specialists meet to devise patient plans, were also done by Microsoft Team meeting. 

Accelerating plans
 
The COVID crisis pushed us to quickly deploy complex programmes and ideas we had long planned. For example, we had the Microsoft technology ready but instead of a planned, staged roll-out, we supported everyone to use it during lock-down. Our clinicians needed to do diagnostic reviews and planning remotely so we also had to get them secure access from home into the clinical systems.

The Director-General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, has asked district health boards to ‘lock in’ the data and digital gains we made as part of the pandemic response.  In Canterbury, that means encouraging clinicians to continue to collaborate with each other by Team meeting and exploring the usefulness of tailored Microsoft health applications. We will also continue to offer patients the option of a video consultation and continue to expand the virtual ward round using existing capabilities.
 
Mental health 

We will continue to innovate with technology to meet an anticipated increase in demand for mental health services. Based on our experience of the earthquakes and mosque attacks, we expect that increase as people reflect or perhaps have difficulty coping with the economic or other impacts of the pandemic.  

We are continuing to develop technology that gives people more information before they come into the health system to streamline their care.  This technology will include a chatbot that allows people to ask and answer questions, and then points them towards a particular service or source of information. 
 
Technology advances made because of the urgency and need created by COVID are exciting. But we always have to look at new technologies critically. As we embed technology and practices adopted during the pandemic we will be asking: how does it speed up diagnostics; how does it improve the experience of care for the patient; how does it improve the experience of work for the clinician? Ultimately that is the stick we use to measure whether new and exciting technology has a place in our system.
 
Stella Ward is Chief Digital Officer at the Canterbury and West Coast DHBs and a Te Papa Hauora Advisory Council Member. Te Papa Hauora is a partnership between Canterbury’s major health and tertiary institutions, established to stimulate opportunities, collaboration and innovation.

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

If you want to contact eHealthNews.nz regarding this View, please email the editor Rebecca McBeth.

Read more CIO Interviews:
CIO Interview: The mahi starts now
CIO Interview: Being the CIO of the smallest DHB in the country

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