Movers & Shakers: Summer 2021

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Kyle Forde

After seven years as chief information officer at WellSouth Primary Health Network, Kyle Forde has decided to return to his consulting business.

“Consulting allows me to diversify my experience and leverage the significant amount of health IT experience I have gained in primary care, whilst balancing work and life to enable me to spend more time with my young children,” he says.
 
Forde has partnered with Susan Iversen of Karo Data Management and purchased half of the business. Karo covers both health and social sector with a primary focus to link these two together. 

“I have been involved in the social sector since 2014 and understand the challenges the social sector faces being disconnected from the health sector so I’m looking forward to dedicating my time to provide a better experience for patients and clients across the sector,” he says.

Stella Ward

Stella Ward has been appointed executive director cloud programme at the Department of Internal Affairs.

Deputy chief executive digital public service at DIA, Ann-Marie Cavanagh, describes Ward as “an experienced digital leader with strong functional leadership expertise. She is passionate about cloud and the opportunities it presents for New Zealand.

“(Ward) has an excellent understanding of the environment and is already well connected with many stakeholders,” Cavanagh says.

Ward was previously chief digital officer at Canterbury and West Coast DHBs, but resigned in August 2020, amongst a wave of resignations of senior executives at CDHB.

She says, “I am delighted to shift into this role and to still be able to work with the health sector to support the MoH, DHBs, PHOs and NGOs with their digital journey and cloud capability adoption.”

Paul Claxton

Paul Claxton has been appointed Orion Health’s head of public sector, based in Wellington. 

He has more than 13 years’ experience working in the health IT sector and joins Orion Health from DXC Technology, where he worked as territory sales executive in London, UK.

An Orion Health press release says his prior roles, “saw him develop an understanding of the broader health ecosystem, as well as the unique requirements for enterprise software solutions, application support and managed services, financial services and related environmental requirements for infrastructure, both on-premise and delivered as a service via the cloud.”

Claxton says, "joining Orion Health is a very exciting opportunity to work with a portfolio of solutions to ensure access to the right information, by the right people, in the right place, and at the right time. Living through a global pandemic only serves to emphasise the urgent need to accelerate our system capability for the benefit of all New Zealanders”.

Ben Walker

Ben Walker is a client director for Spark Health. He previously worked for CCL, where he had been part of a virtual team known as Spark Health for 18 months before Spark Health was formally launched.

Walker is working with a team of digital and health experts lead by Spark Health chief executive Will Reedy. 

“Spark Health’s mission is to transform health and wellness with digital services to deliver better health for every New Zealander. I’m excited that Spark Health gives me the opportunity to work more closely with my clients in order to deliver better health outcomes,” he says.

Blaik Wilson

Blaik Wilson has become chief executive of Cemplicity. Wilson was previously the chief operating officer of the company, which delivers patient-reported measures for the healthcare sector.

Originally from New Zealand, Cemplicity is looking to raise investor capital and expand overseas, opening a first office in North America and expanding into Asia.

Wilson says this decision is based on current market conditions and the success of several recent projects.