CIO Interview: Tackling Covid with tech: a pathology perspective

VIEW - Brent Glanville, chief information officer at the Asia Pacific Healthcare Group (APHG)

It’s estimated that 70 percent of all healthcare decisions have a pathology component and until recently, laboratories have had a relatively low profile within the healthcare system.

Many readers may not be aware of the Asia Pacific Healthcare Group (APHG), but we provide pathology services to over 75 percent of the population in both the community and hospital setting, processing more than 6.7 million patient episodes per annum.

Building a team
I commenced my role as CIO at APHG in November 2019 in somewhat of a baptism of fire, with an ownership change and the Covid-19 pandemic running in parallel.

However, even before the pandemic hit, it was clear to me the IT department needed to get back to basics, function more successfully as team, add value to the business, and regain their trust.

From my time playing cricket, I learnt that the most successful teams have a common goal, they value every team member for the skill they bring to the group and support each other.

From that perspective the Covid-19 pandemic came along at an opportune time for us: it reminded us of our core priorities and provided us with an immediate united focus. It also put the team in a position where they could make a real difference to New Zealanders and quickly deliver in an everchanging environment.

The Covid response
Transferring specimens around the APHG lab network is a routine occurrence for us, however Covid meant we needed to take this to a new level. The requirement was to be able to receive Covid samples from any location in New Zealand and process them on the varied analyser platforms and locations, depending on surge condition, capacity and logistics.

Generally, when laboratories receive samples, they know exactly where the samples will be processed. However, in this case we needed to be able to cater for uncertainty and ensure laboratory operational staff had the tools to allow them to make these decisions in real time.

Additionally, we needed to interface new analysers, develop an automated pooling system, and get a large number of staff working from home resulting in an increase in work for a comparatively small IT team.

Of course, these were only the internal requirements we needed to consider. APHG was part of the national laboratory response and as such there were standardised reporting requirements and the integration of the national Covid electronic ordering system implemented by the Ministry of Health in conjunction with ESR.

Naturally, there were also patients and referrers to consider. Our development team stood up a patient booking system for our collection centres, to ease the wait time pressure, and our electronic ordering team have dealt with a massive 400 percent growth of ordering during the last two years.

Developing new tech
Along the way we were thrown another curve ball: winning the Covid Saliva testing tender. This was a nationwide requirement for testing border workers and those workers who had exemptions to work in other regions.

Two new requirements emerged, a self-collect model, which is not common in laboratory testing, and direct interaction with the patient via technology, in this case a phone app. Given the timeframes, we needed to commence developing the app, and back-end processes, well ahead of knowing if we had been awarded the contract.

We engaged and collaborated with Pathology Associates and Medlab Central to provide the required national solution and ensure workers could be tested anywhere across the country.

Although there were a few challenges along the way, the Covid-19 Saliva app proved hugely successful with over 44,000 registered users and 370,000 sample collections.
More recently, working closely with Air New Zealand, we have developed a Covid travel service with official certification and integration with the IATA travel app.

Learning from experience
As they phrase goes, it’s been a roller coaster of a journey. It hasn’t always been easy however, I’m incredibly proud of how our people have been focused, stood up when they needed to, and formed closer working relationships both within the team, with laboratory staff, including other laboratory providers. And most importantly along the way we even managed to have some fun!

The test we now face, and I suspect it’s the same with many other companies, is taking the positive aspects from the experience, continuing the focus and ensure we keep building on the experience.

The next couple of years will be exciting and challenging with the need to catch up on paused projects and new ones as we move into a new era with Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority.

If you want to contact eHealthNews.nz regarding this View, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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