Digital Health at Scale: Improved health outcomes through digitally-enabled connected care

FEATURE - Industry Innovation Article - Telstra Health

Connected healthcare is applied to everything Telstra Health does, and numerous health practitioners rely on its solutions and systems to support their patient interactions. Telstra Health’s Head of Hospitals and Connected Health, Graeme Osborne, explains how clinically-led, patient-centric connected healthcare can support New Zealand’s evolving health and care ecosystem.

Telstra Health is Australia’s largest digital health company and our solutions and systems help to support a broad range of public and private providers in healthcare, aged and disability care across 20 countries. One of our greatest strengths as an organisation has been bringing together disconnected parts of the health, aged care and disability system at scale to solve complex problems for governments, health systems and hospital and healthcare providers.

With the reform of the health and disability system in New Zealand we are excited to bring our vision of “realising a connected and improved digital health experience for all” across the Tasman to New Zealand.

We understand the process New Zealand has focused on for many years of ‘integrating care’ around the consumer and patient, and ensuring clinicians are leading the adoption of new models of care enabled by digital solutions. With a proposed shift to national and regional operating models, the time is right for us to bring our person-centred, clinically-led approach and digital expertise to New Zealand.

Our services and solutions have been proven at the national and state-wide level and cover whole of population health, virtual care, digital hospitals and specialist clinics, primary and community care, aged and disability care and many other related areas.

With a focus on clinical quality and health outcomes, we co-design and operate digital health solutions that help solve the most complex healthcare challenges and we look forward to working with leaders in the New Zealand health and disability system - when the borders open!

Innovation-leading models of care
As the New Zealand healthcare sector continues to evolve, access to reliable, efficient and cost-effective virtual health services have never been more essential for enabling a healthier population.

A national health system in New Zealand could encourage the accessibility of high-quality healthcare for all New Zealanders, regardless of their location. The concept of accessing healthcare anywhere within a country - even in the most rural areas - via our virtual care and remote monitoring solutions is developing at pace.

We have supported the delivery of new models of care for many of our health partners to create improved access for consumers, participants and patients by providing access to patient information and patient pathways. These new models of care have been supported by information sharing solutions that maintain appropriate privacy and security requirements.

Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for telehealth services increased dramatically both in GP telehealth areas and in broader virtual clinical areas such as allied health and specialty services. Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen an increased demand in our Virtual Health Monitoring solution, which connects clinicians and patients via a secure digital health platform enabling clinicians to monitor the health and wellbeing of their patients remotely.

Our Virtual Health Monitoring solution has the ability to create more appropriate allocation of resources and can free up hospital resources. An example of this, is our work with the Tasmanian Government’s Department of Health and Telehealth team who wished to manage guests at hotel quarantine sites in Tasmania using a range of our Virtual Health Monitoring devices to digitally monitor and record their health status. As well as creating efficiencies, this approach significantly reduced the opportunity for transmission of COVID-19 to clinical staff, hotel employees and other guests in quarantine.

Analytics and insights informing clinical decisions
At Telstra Health, we provide expertise in specialist data analytics and consulting with healthcare organisations to give them the insights they need to make decisions and build strategies for the granular and sustainable care of their populations.

For Queensland Health, we have developed a state-wide Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed availability model which refreshes in real time, and it allows all the beds managed across multiple hospitals in Queensland to be monitored from a single operating site, providing transparency and visibility. This solution, which was primarily developed to manage the transition of COVID-19 in Queensland communities, has provided many other benefits and there are plans to evolve this solution as a patient coordination hub.

As the New Zealand healthcare system continues to adapt, data and analytics and interoperability and platform capability could be beneficial for informing decisions for better patient outcomes.

Supporting consumers and patients across the continuum of care
The move to a national health system in New Zealand could also encourage more patient-centred digital health journeys from primary care to hospital and beyond. Integrating data, processes and technologies between healthcare settings can give time back to healthcare professionals so that they can focus on what’s important – caring for patients and creating sustainable, clinical outcomes.

At Telstra Health, we help hospitals deliver safer, high-quality patient care while improving efficiency and connecting them with other parts of the health system, for example through new models of care supporting hospital in the home and virtual care. Our digital hospital solutions are modular, interoperable and highly customisable to support individual clinicians and health providers’ requirements. For example, Telstra Health’s innovative Medtasker solution, a clinical task management system, was introduced at Royal Hobart Hospital to improve clinical communication and task management in the hospital’s Emergency Department and has since been rolled out to other departments.

Furthermore, our Kyra digital hospital solution can improve Emergency Department (ED) performance and connects patient information across NSW hospitals. The Northern Beaches Hospital is Sydney’s newest hospital after opening in October 2018 and our Kyra Clinical solution is the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) used in the 400-bed hospital and is connected to the NSW Hospital Health Information Exchange (HIE).

Anecdotal feedback from Northern Beaches Hospital shows that clinicians truly enjoy using the Kyra Clinical interface and mobile solution, particularly due to fewer mouse clicks needed compared to other EMRs, and transparency across all levels and roles for accessing patient information and clinical notes. Today, Northern Beaches Hospital has the highest performing ED department in NSW, and our Kyra solution has supported the achievement of this result.

Connected healthcare across all levels of care
Looking to 2022, we’re hopeful that hospitals in New Zealand will soon be able to benefit from parts of our Kyra digital hospital platform, such as Medtasker.

At a primary care level, we recently strengthened our capabilities by investing in leading primary healthcare technology MedicalDirector, which is used by 23,000 clinicians to manage more than 80 million patient consultations every year both within and outside of Australia.

From a hospital standpoint, following our recent investment in global leader in healthcare and hospital software solutions PowerHealth, which offers costing and billing solutions, we aspire to support its customer base, many of which are District Health Boards in New Zealand, this further strengthening our footprint and knowledge of the New Zealand health system.

Whether in Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere across the globe, Telstra Health’s flexible and adaptable information systems can help healthcare organisations and clinicians quickly and easily store, access, update and manage critical patient data, as well as securely share critical information with patients’ other providers.

Through combining innovative models of care, the outcomes of analytics and insights and coordinated and connected healthcare journeys, our people are helping to solve some of the biggest healthcare challenges in the health and care ecosystem. We’ve seen first-hand what this can do in Australia, and we’re looking ahead to what this could do in New Zealand.

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