60-Second CiLN member profile – Karen Shaw

NEWS - Karen Shaw, Clinical Informatics Manager, 3DHB ICT

Could you explain what your role entails?
My role involves many things and is evolving all the time at the moment, which is exciting. 

I manage a team of Clinical Informatics Analysts and between us we work across the breadth of changes involving digital technology in health care. Our work involves meeting with clinicians and IT professionals to look at problem definition, needs analysis, solution options as well as general queries, clinical engagement and communication. 

In my role I am also involved in higher level process changes to the way that ICT interacts with the clinical and corporate side of our business. Looking at how we get problems and solutions into ICT, how we help prioritise ICT requests with a clinical lens rather than a technology lens and how we communication better with clinical users. 

I'm involved in a range of different areas from small solutions, such as printing direct to pharmacy from a COVID ward to avoid paper documents being moved, through to larger projects such as the clinical engagement and change management associated with our move to a single clinical portal for all 3 DHBS. 
The role is diverse, exciting and constantly changing and moving which makes it challenging and stimulating. I am learning new things every day.

What parts of digital health interest you the most?
I am particularly passionate about helping clinical users to better interact with and be true partners in decisions involving digital technologies. This role gives me the opportunity to realise some of this and help busy clinicians get the technology they need to improve healthcare for patients.

I am also fascinated by emerging technologies. I am really looking forward to seeing how we can use some of the exciting new developments in digital health within our own healthcare environment. Of particular interest at the moment are things like voice recognition software partnered with AI and its potential for reducing clinician admin time by automatically recording transcripts of patient/clinician interactions and forming this into a clinical note. But there is so much going on out there, so many incredible developments that I'm sure something else will catch my eye. 

I am also keen to see how we can make digital health into an enabler for patients, particularly vulnerable patients, and increase equity of access to all healthcare users. There are so many incredible initiatives out there that we can all learn from and utilise. Sharing of what works and what doesn't is key in clinical informatics and digital health in general.

What projects are you currently involved in?
Quite a few actually and there are more coming every day. Our service is beginning to show value and we are being called upon all the time to broker better engagement and partnership in big, medium and small pieces of work. 

A big project for me and my team is the 3DHB move to a single clinical Portal. This will be a massive change for our clinical and administrative users and the team are closely involved in ensuring that users feedback and decision making on each stage of the proposed changes is driving the changes being made. We are fronting the clinical engagement and ensuring that the decisions needing to be made are communicated to users is a manner they can understand and in a forum that suits them. Then feeding the feedback and decisions back to the IT team. 

I am also in the process of developing a triaging tool for ICT requests coming into the service and putting a clinical lens on the decisions being made. This helps non-clinical ICT people get a standardised prioritised queue of requests and allows us to ensure that the most clinically important work goes to the top of the queue. 

One member of my team is helping with the clinical engagement and implementation of ePrescribing for outpatients. Another has been involved in addressing email encryption for clinicians as well as clinical users requiring new solutions to collect, analyse and use data for service improvements. Clinical Informatics is working with IT to establish better engagement with community providers and secure sharing of healthcare information. 

I am also very much enjoying being a part of the CiLN advisory panel (covering Steve Earnshaw while he is in the acting CDO role). This has been a great way to get involved with and help influence Clinical Informatics nationally. I am hoping to carry this on in the future. 

This is a small selection of the things we are involved in, we're excited to see what the future brings.

If you could have any other job, what would it be?
At this time I wouldn't have any other job. The role of clinical informatics is still in its infancy in New Zealand and we have so much to offer. I firmly believe that Clinical Informatics has a great deal of value to add to New Zealand healthcare. I have so much to do in this role, it is challenging and I am learning so much. I think it will be a while before I find anything that beats being a clinical informatician!

If you have one piece of advice for other digital health leaders, what would it be?
One thing I think is vital for healthcare going forward that investment is made in educating clinicians in digital technologies. It is fundamental that clinicians have the skills and knowledge to truly be partners in on going technological improvements. 

This needs to happen as early as their undergraduate education and be a strong ongoing thread through their clinical work. The more digitally enabled clinicians we have the more our clinicians can be at the front of engaging with and using digital technology for the benefit of patients. As Digital Health Leaders we need to be strongly advocating for a national response to this.

What’s your favourite piece of technology at home and why?
Now that is a difficult question as I am a bit of a tech hoarder. I recently purchased a midi keyboard but haven't had much time to play with it yet. It's part of a home music set up that I would like to spend more time on and my digital audio workstation,  Ableton is probably my favourite toy. Saying that, I love my computers and my mobile too, so hard to pick one.

Who would you like to play you in a film?
I particularly like Tilda Swinton. I love her talent, incredibly different looks and her style. I'd be flattered if she played me in a film.

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

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