HiNZ View: 2020 and beyond

VIEW – Kim Mundell, HiNZ CEO

Twelve months ago, the digital health community were together at Hobbiton enjoying the HiNZ Conference dinner. Our 2019 conference achieved record attendance, with 1400 delegates, 350 speakers, and 120 exhibitors participating in the four-day event.

How the world has changed since then!

During the first lockdown in April 2020, HiNZ made the difficult decision to cancel both conferences: Innovations in Digital Health, scheduled for May 2020, and Digital Health Week NZ in November 2020.

We considered running the conference as a multi-day virtual event, but our research indicated that frequent, short webinars, and free in-person regional events were more likely to be useful for the community, instead of having one 'big bang' at the end of the year.

We launched the eHealthNews LIVE webinar series in May 2020 and the 21 webinars have been viewed over 5000 times. HiNZ webinars are free for anyone to view and can be watched live or on-demand. The webinar series enabled the digital health community to share ideas as the situation rapidly evolved throughout the year.

Resources provided in 2020

At last year’s conference, HiNZ built a soundproof TV studio, enabling us to record quality interviews with thought leaders. The eHTV Studio interviews are free for anyone to view on-demand in the HiNZ website.

All presentations at Digital Health Week NZ 2019 were also filmed and are available exclusively for HiNZ members on-demand in the eHTV Webcast Library. This rich archive of case studies is an excellent educational resource with 1400 expert presentations on a wide variety of topics, filmed over the past five years.

HiNZ provides eHealthNews.nz as a free service for the community. After two years of publication, there are now over 900 news articles in the eHealthNews.nz news archive, providing a good overview of activities across the digital health community.

In November 2020, we published a member-only Special Report on Telehealth.

HiNZ supported the launch of the new Health Forum NZ in March 2020 and there are lively discussions on Discourse by a diverse group of health and affiliated professionals. This is a free service for all employees within the health sector.

CiLN have been active across the digital health community. Their forum on Discourse hosts many active discussions. In the past year, CiLN delivered two workshops, a response to the Health and Disability System Review Report to the Ministry of Health, and a Clinical Informatics Position Statement. An impressive list of achievements in only their second year.

We launched the CiLN Award last year to recognise a clinician working in digital health. Our thanks to Spark Health for funding the $5000 prize for continuing education in digital health. Congratulations to Dr Lara Hopley on being the 2020 winner.

We also support the HiNZ Nursing Informatics Special Interest Group who publish a newsletter for nurses every second month.

The HiNZ Cartoon of the Week is published fortnightly in HiNZ eNewsletters and they injected much needed humour into a difficult year. All past cartoons are available to view in our online cartoon gallery.

We recently published an acronym dictionary for health informatics and an infographic ‘what is health informatics?’ Suggestions for additional infographics and acronyms are always welcome. 

Coming up in 2021

We are looking forward to reconnecting with you all during our in-person events in 2021.

The Digital Health Leadership Summits in March 2021 will enable digital health leaders to have in-depth discussions on burning topics. Attendance is free to HiNZ members. There are still seats available so apply now for your ticket.

Digital Health Week NZ 2021 returns to Wellington on 29 November to 2 December 2021, as a three day in-person conference. Save the date in your calendar now.

Our popular lunchtime webinars will continue throughout 2021 so look out for those.

The conference hiatus in 2020 has given HiNZ time to develop additional services that we will unveil in 2021. These new services include our Fellowship programme, an Organisation Membership, more Networking Events, a magazine for the sector, an upgraded website, and much more.

Sign up for our newsletter so you get all the announcements as they happen. 

In the meantime, we wish you a relaxing and uneventful holiday season.

Your support matters: please consider joining HiNZ so we can continue to provide free content and educational resources to the community. To join HiNZ please go here >>

Kim Mundell is chief executive of Health Informatics New Zealand

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

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