Data and Digital Futures: Te Whatu Ora

eHealthNews.nz: National Systems & Strategy

Monday, 29 August 2022

Share |

VIEW - Stuart Bloomfield, Te Whatu Ora interim chief, data and digital

Stuart Bloomfield Our name, Te Whatu Ora, means ‘The weaving of wellness’. It is combining together people, resources, organisations, thoughts and actions for the wellbeing of all.

Making equity gains is part of our DNA and - along with Te Tiriti principles – will permeate everything we do.

Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora are the largest data and digital team in the country. Our collective footprint is large. We are still consolidating the 29 entities we’ve merged.

Investment priorities will be aligned to Te Pae Tata, our New Zealand Health Plan. Investments will take a whole of health system view, ensuring that it extends into the primary and community care space.

Funding the future
A significant amount of funding has been secured, over four years, for a number of developments.

One is the delivery of a national Cybersecurity uplift programme that results in a stronger, sector wide approach and addresses the most critical risks

The first tranche of the national Hira programme is underway, which will provide easier access to health data as and when needed – for clinicians as well as individuals, and we continue to address historic underinvestment and digital equity gaps.

Budget 2022 also provided funding over the next four years to rollout the data and digital infrastructure for Dunedin Hospital and the Southern region.

With this, we will ensure our new hospital is not a digital island – reusing best systems the health sector already owns, acquiring new technologies, and joining onto a common national data platform. This will ensure patients receive a more joined-up experience, and we have a template for future builds, such as in Nelson and Whangarei.

There is ongoing funding to retain selected systems and infrastructure developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which will scale to the wider delivery of population health and disease management including immunisations and future epidemics.

We will also provide the National Public Health Service with a common data and digital platform for the delivery of core Public Health Unit functions.

Achieving Pae Ora
Data and digital is one of the five key system shifts to achieve Pae Ora, our Healthy Futures Act, and underpins the other four shifts we want to achieve.

We will fulfil our Te Tiriti obligations by enabling the data sovereignty aspiration where Māori can see themselves in our health system and influence the way care is delivered - informed by data.

All people will be able to access a comprehensive range of support in their local communities to help them stay well because data and digital investment will help shift care closer to home by, for example, growing virtual and telehealth care and supporting information sharing between care settings.

Access to quality emergency and specialist care will be enabled by clinical information systems that share patient information.

We have an incredible opportunity to unify and simplify our data and digital environment. Importantly there will be reprioritisation if we can’t draw the line between current investment and impact on improving healthcare experience and outcomes for patients and their whānau.

Our current focus is rapidly getting to grips with the data and digital projects underway or planned, taking special interest in those which address inequities or move care closer to home.

A culture of change
Data and Digital is as much about people and process as it is about technology.

Listening to consumers, to clinical staff, to administrators and using what they say - to keep improving digital tools, making them intuitive to use and easy to access is extremely important.

From my experience, success comes from fast but incremental change, building on success and delivering with, not just for, consumers, clinicians and other health leaders. Through clinical leadership, incremental change and trust, we build a change-fit culture. That is, where the health workforce welcomes change.

We will know we have been successful when we can point at a thriving New Zealand digital health sector providing borderless, end-to-end services where our workforce is equipped with tools to do their best wherever they are, and consumers of our services have more control of their healthcare experience.

This View is an edited version of a speech delivered at the Digital Health Association Grand Hall event at Parliament on August 24 2022.

Picture: Stuart Bloomfield, Te Whatu Ora interim chief, data and digital