Health NZ to simplify ‘confused’ technology landscape

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Health NZ will not be a “passive recipient of vendor solutions” and will be rigorous in defining what it needs in terms of technology, the chair of interim Health NZ says.

Rob Campbell told the MTANZ HealthTech Conference in Auckland on June 28 that New Zealand needs a single public health delivery service working towards a clear set of goals.

Health NZ will focus on equity, efficiency, effectiveness, entrepreneurship, and excellence.

He described the current technology landscape as a “confused tangle of national, district and local service networks and technologies that no one understands”, and said the multiple contracts and arrangements in place need to be simplified and clarified.

“We are not there as a passive recipient of vendor solutions. You can expect us to be much more rigorous in defining what we need,” he told the audience.

“We have to enable the best options to spread and to replace less effective approaches.”

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Campbell said New Zealand is not a financially rich country and “can’t afford a public health system that matches all the capabilities and treatments that become available in some parts of some systems somewhere else.

“While staff on the front line are under real pressure coping with current realities, the corridors of management are cluttered with consultants, contractors and vendors hawking their wares to solve problems which they promote to meet whatever they have for sale,” he said.

Health NZ and the Māori Health Authority (MHA) are being established on Friday July 1.

Co-chair of the Māori Health Authority, Sharon Shea, told the conference there are many waka on the journey together towards Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) and invited the health technology industry sector to become an ally of the authority.

She said the MHA wants whānau to be empowered as agents of change for their own health and wellbeing and it will be looking for digital technology solutions that support that.

As part of the MHA data and digital work programme, they will create a Māori Sovereignty Framework covering health data, information, privacy and security.

Other priorities will be; greater monitoring capability for equity, digital inclusion, more joined up data for the social determinants of health, and a focus on Hauora Māori innovation.

Picture: top - Rob Campbell, chair of Interim Health NZ, middle - Co-chair of the Māori Health Authority, Sharon Shea, presenting at MTANZ



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