Taranaki and Waikato will not deploy regional portal

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Taranaki and Waikato DHBs have decided not to implement the Midland Clinical Portal (MCP) as their clinical workstation.

The MCP first went live in July 2017, providing a read-only view of real-time patient information via a shared instance of Orion Health’s clinical portal product visible across Bay of Plenty, Lakes, Hauora Tairāwhiti, Taranaki and Waikato DHBs.

A new read-write capable version of the MCP was deployed to Bay of Plenty DHB in October 2020 and Hauora Tairawhiti on March 26, 2021. Lakes DHB is scheduled to implement MCP by the end of September this year.

The original plan was for all five of the Midland DHBs to deploy the interactive regional portal, however Waikato and Taranaki will now keep their current clinical workstations and integrate with the MCP to share patient data.

Kevin Snee, Waikato DHB chief executive, says Taranaki and Waikato DHBs remain committed to the vision of Te Manawa Taki ‘one patient, one record, one region’ by providing clinicians with a single-point of access to regional patient information. 

“Both DHBs remain committed to the stated objective of sharing information for clinical benefit across Te Manawa Taki, this will be achieved through interoperability methods that closely align with the Ministry of Health strategies,” he says. 

“The adoption of interoperability allows both DHBs to join with MCP through their existing clinical workstations and share information between DHBs as needed.”  

Waikato will continue to use its system HealthViews and Taranaki will continue with Orion Concerto, but will upgrade to a later version.

Taranaki DHB chief information officer Steven Parrish says the DHB already has an effective clinical portal in place which provides similar functionality as MCP.

“In the context of evolving digital capability we have decided not to progress with a version of Clinical Portal which is less than what we have,” he says.  

“However, we remain committed to a regional approach to patient data access and this will occur through the intra-operability of our clinical workstation at a data level.”

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

Read more Clinical software news

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page