CIO Interview: A local, regional and national approach

eHealthNews.nz: National Systems & Strategy

CIO Interview: A local, regional and national approach

Thursday, 26 August 2021

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VIEW - Anne Speden – executive director digital enablement, Hawke’s Bay DHB

A key driver for me joining the health sector, after working with the Police, was my focus on transformation at a local, regional and national level.

I didn't join Hawke’s Bay thinking of this as one DHB in isolation, I saw it as an opportunity to work together and partner. It makes sense to share ideas, to push and pull information, in order to be efficient.

My focus is on linking everything up regionally and nationally, while still adding clinical and community value on the ground. We are also looking outside of the hospital into primary care, as we are one health ecosystem.

Locally and regionally, we are focused on reducing technology debt, addressing cybersecurity, implementing new models of care, and advanced analytics.

Partnering to enable our region is pivotal to what we do and I am working to share learnings and resources and prioritise workflow with my Central region colleagues.

A modern approach
I started on my journey at Hawke’s Bay DHB by working to modernise what was a somewhat traditional IT shop environment. It's been a process of transformation over the last four years as we have shifted towards modern practices that are business-led with a focus on people and process first, then technology.

We work with service design to map out the business problems we're trying to solve and we're setting up agile squads with key business leads in particular domains.

One of these is a cybersecurity squad, which includes frontline engagement and communication on what we need to be aware of and we are sharing that across primary care. This is an example of something that we can ‘do once and well’ and then share regionally and nationally.

We are also setting up a regional chief information security officer (CISO), who will be responsible for policy and the way we manage our cyber environment across the region.

A focus on clinical leadership and Whānau Voice
One of the key opportunities we needed to address when I first started was getting the right clinical leadership to partner with and prioritise the problems we need to solve together.

I recognize the importance of clinical informatics and have worked, together with Alex Kemp, chief allied professions officer at Whanganui DHB, on a Terms of Reference on clinical partnerships and shared decision making for the Central region.

This means we've got shared resources of clinical people leading pieces of work locally and regionally in areas such as paediatrics and the Emergency Departments.

As a region we are also looking at where we can improve efficiency through economies of scale and working together.

Mid-Central, Whanganui, Hawke’s Bay, Hutt Valley, Wairarapa and Capital Coast DHBs are all in different phases of our eReferrals journey, but we have agreed to collaborate to align our activities to enable a joint regional solution approach. This is a key example of how we are focusing on our local ‘whānau voice’ by engaging our community upfront to understand what works best for them.

We are also looking at how we can share resources regionally, such as a ‘virtual architects’ team approach.

Continuous improvement
Advanced analytics is another focus area and key to that is moving our data respectfully to the cloud. We have developed a really clear data sovereignty policy and consulted with local iwi about moving health data from onsite to offsite – this will be an ongoing partnership focused engagement model.

In partnership with maternity services we have designed an interactive dashboard that clearly highlights volumes and key demographic such as ethnicity metrics at a glance.

This enables us to focus on key areas of care pregnant women receive, such as gestational diabetes. The dashboard also includes interactivity whereby the ‘user’ can filter the entire data set and focus on answering specific questions about identified cohorts, leading to actionable insights and delivering measure outcomes for women in our care.

Pharmacy, digital enablement and Spark have also worked in partnership to deliver an innovative critical medicine monitoring solution, allowing us to track and proactively keep those expensive medicine safe.

A national perspective
I am deputy chair of the National Digital Leadership Forum, where health CIOs across the country collaborate, share experience and look to enable the Health and Disability Review.

It is very important, as we move to a national environment, that we look at how we can standardise and improve processes, such as shared procurements.

There are some really important strategies that we can do together both regionally and nationally, and this will allow us to work differently together, to enable the communities, clinicians and whānau we serve.

Health is a complex environment and I am passionate about enabling positive change - it’s important we keep the patient/whānau at the centre of everything we do.