Movers and Shakers – Winter 2021 - Health Informatics New Zealand

eHealthNews.nz: Workforce

Movers and Shakers – Winter 2021

Monday, 23 August 2021

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Karen Blake

Karen Blake has joined PwC New Zealand as Digital Health Leader to focus on improving health and wellbeing outcomes for every New Zealander through data, information and technology.

With such significant sector reform underway, she is delighted to combine her specialist knowledge in health data and information strategy, workforce development, governance and service design to help clients with the transformation of healthcare delivery.

A proud Kāi Tahu wahine, Blake brings over 25 years of health sector experience across Australia and New Zealand, most recently as head of clinical informatics at healthAlliance. A registered midwife, she has also worked in government, management and education, and is currently a board member of Health Informatics New Zealand (HiNZ).

Steven Parrish

After five years, Steven Parrish is moving on as chief information officer of Taranaki DHB.

Over this time he has led the stabilisation and upgrading of the technology used within the DHB, increased focus on cybersecurity practices and processes as well as cybersecurity end user education, and developed a high performing team working to meet the ever changing needs of the organisation.

Parrish spent nine months as SRO of the Te Manawa Taki eSPACE programme where he performed a programme review and made recommendations to the CEOs, which were all endorsed. He has been the lead CIO for Te Manawa Taki for the past three years representing the region nationally, including as the national CIO representative for the Pharmac Medical Devices working party.

More recently he took on the SRO of the Covid-19 vaccination programme for Taranaki.

Parrish is heading back to Australia to take on the role of principal senior medical advisor/ chief medical information officer, for Dedalus APAC.

Tracy Voice

Tracy Voice has left her role as chief digital officer (CDO) at 3DHB to become group general manager, improvements, systems and technology at the Ministry of Social Development, where she is leading their team and the MSD digital transformation.

Voice says her key achievement at 3DHB was developing a digital strategy, alongside governance, across the greater wellington DHBs.

“I unified the teams, created a capability and remuneration framework and designed a roadmap to drive outcomes that would benefit our clinicians and non-clinical staff,” she says.

Key projects include; clinical workspace, digital workplace and digital foundations, of which many of the business cases are at final stages of signoff and some have commenced implementation.

Voice was also deputy chair of the national health CIOs forum. Anne Speden, executive digital enablement director at Hawke's Bay District Health Board, is now deputy chair of the group and Steve Earnshaw is now acting CDO at 3DHB.

Jaron Burbidge

Jaron Burbidge has been appointed regional sales manager for Zoom based in Auckland.

Jaron has over 23 year’s experience in the IT and unified communications industries, previously holding roles at AWS, Microsoft, IBM and TANDBERG in both Australia and New Zealand. He has experience working across the heath IT sector and was involved in some of the early telehealth programs in New Zealand.

“Zoom’s mission is to become the communications backbone bridging business and clinical workflows across the healthcare ecosystem, and I’m excited at the opportunity to bring this mission to life to deliver better health outcomes for all New Zealanders” Burbidge says.

Stephen Burmester

Dedalus has appointed former IBM security leader Stephen Burmester as its new CTO, driving the technology strategy and direction for their products and customers across the Asia Pacific region.

Burmester is an experienced information and cyber security professional, having spent 25+ years working as an information leader and change agent across multiple industries.

Prior to IBM, Burmester was CISO, and chief technical architect at the Australian National eHealth Transition Authority, where he oversaw the design and development of Australia’s foundational components for eHealth. He also spent several years at Queensland Health as a Strategic Advisor to the CIO.