Interim Health Plan identifies importance of digital tools

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

New Zealand’s interim Health Plan – Te Pae Tata – says digital tools will make an important contribution to improve efficiency, outcomes and equity of outcomes in health services.

The new plan has been developed by Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand and Te Aka Whai Ora – Māori Health Authority and replaces 20 different district annual plans. It is designed to begin transformation while a full-scale plan is developed.

Te Pae Tata says Te Whatu Ora will grow the opportunities for people to use digital tools to access and use their health information, make appointments, receive phone and video consultations and use equipment to monitor their health at home.

“Access to health information, self and remote monitoring empowers people, whānau and communities to better manage their own health and wellbeing,” it says.

Digital tools will also provide greater support to the health workforce by reducing the administration burden for staff, and making the right information available at the right time and place.

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“Effective digital solutions will enable our clinical staff to spend more of their time with patients, more easily engage in multi-disciplinary working, share information with peers and engage in a range of education and information resources,” the plan says.

“They will also support our non-clinical staff to spend more time on high-value tasks, minimising repetitive searches for and entry of data.”

It says the health reforms provide the opportunity for Te Whatu Ora to take a national view of the system’s digital challenges, use scale to leverage better digital services, and build on successes from around the country.

The plan identifies ‘integrating information sources to generate insights across the health system’ as a key priority in order to keep people and whānau at the centre of service design, delivery and performance.

“We currently collect and maintain many datasets about our health system, but we have limited capacity and tools to bring information sources together to draw insights,” says Te Pae Tata.

“We also have gaps in our knowledge, particularly in understanding the contributions of primary care and NGOs to health outcomes, along with understanding and measuring people’s unmet needs. Developing this understanding is critical to improve health inequities.”

The plan says Māori sovereignty principles will be embedded in the way the system manages and uses data and health service organisations will treat health information as taonga/taoka for all groups of people.

In order to strengthen primary and community care, Te Whatu Ora will commission provider network support services to enable quality improvements and information sharing between providers.

Standard requirements will include: data sharing; meeting modern digital standards, including cyber security and interoperability; and working as part of locality provider networks, the plan says.

Te Whatu Ora will have four regions nationally, known as Northern, Te Manawa Taki, Central and Te Waipounamu. Interim data and digital leads have been appointed for each of these regions.

Five digital healthcare actions are;

• Create and implement actions to deliver national consistency in data and digital capability and solutions across Te Whatu Ora including streamlining duplicate legacy systems inherited from DHBs and Shared Service Agencies, to improve intra-operability and reduce operating costs
• Implement Hira, a user friendly, integrated national electronic health record, to the agreed level, ensuring the expected benefits of the investment are achieved, and taking all practicable measures to ensure that project milestones are met.
• Scale and adapt population health digital services developed to support the Covid-19 response to serve other key population health priorities.
• Improve the interoperability of data and digital systems across the hospital network, and between primary, community and secondary care settings.
• Improve digital access to primary care as an option to improve access and choice, including virtual after-hours and telehealth, with a focus on rural communities.
  
  

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