Telehealth national standards in pipeline

eHealthNews.nz: Interoperability

Monday, 5 October 2020

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NEWS – eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Picture: Data working group chair Richard Li

The NZ Telehealth Leadership Group’s data working group is developing national data standards for telehealth.

The group’s chief information officer representative, Richard Li of Bay of Plenty DHB, says the significant growth in the use of telehealth by DHBs means there is a need for national standards for telehealth implementation.

Li, who chairs the working group, says data collection around telehealth has developed organically until now as it was being done at reasonably low levels nationwide.

Since the arrival of Covid-19 and the need for national lockdowns, DHBs and other health providers have scaled up their telehealth use and are putting more process around it.

The data group is still in its early stages, but is working with the Ministry of Health and some local telehealth champions to determine national standards in five areas.

These are; mode of consultation across sectors; telehealth devices, services and mechanisms that generate data in the appropriate context and quality for use; clinical findings that are generated by virtual or device means; patient-reported outcomes/effectiveness measures in telehealth services; and clinical episode outcome measures.

“For this to be truly successful you need to track the whole patient journey from early booking, to seeing the doctor, to prescribing and further communication as well as reporting for the doctors and the Ministry,” explains Li.

“Data touches each stage of this journey and we need a consistent way to collect this data and organise it in a strategic way.”

He says the group will look at international telehealth standards to integrate with ones developed for New Zealand.

Li says the group is starting with standards for DHBs, but will ultimately look for these to cover the whole health sector.

“This group aims to provide reference and guidance for consumers, clinicians, health service providers and industry groups to implement meaningful, effective and robust data-driven telehealth solutions,” he says.

The NZTLG has expanded rapidly in response to Covid-19 to include chief information officer and chief operating officer representatives. Membership of its working groups has also grown.

NZTLG chair Ruth Large says, “those representatives are really critical for us to make sure that we're getting widespread information sharing, so that we can support all of the work that's going on.”