Stuart's View – The importance of accuracy

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

Being 'accurate’ means doing the right thing that has a tangible and positive effect on healthcare provision and outcomes.

We need to be looking for the evidence that our efforts make a difference, by identifying the line of sight from the work you are doing to the healthcare benefit.

If you are a clinician working on clinical informatics solutions, the line may be easy to see. If not, you need to involve clinicians to help you understand the connection.

Investment decisions
Te Whatu Ora data and digital also needs the input of clinicians, consumers and their whānau into the big investment decisions we need to make. That is why I have established a Clinician, Consumer and Whānau Digital Advisory Council, under Robyn Whittaker’s leadership.

The value of this group is not simply the value of clinician and consumer input separately – there is real synergy in having both groups discuss priorities and approaches to service implementation together, each enlightening the other.

Being accurate means reducing the amount of time and resource we spend on activity that does not add significant benefit to the health system.

A recent investment review has identified a lot of work planned or started, that is heading in different directions. Individually, they may be the right thing to do in a single area or district. Collectively, a large number of them were assessed as being the wrong thing to do.

We must keep assessing whether we are doing the right thing to move forward in a unified way.

National data and digital programmes
We cannot keep operating on a myriad of different systems with siloed data environments.

The National Data Platform programme will consolidate our data environments on one platform, removing duplication of resource and effort and enabling secure and easy data sharing.

The Hira programme has also recently been reviewed and reset.

The initial focus of the programme is on establishing connectors to key consumer information so that it is available for viewing and updating by consumers or others they delegate, including their whānau and care providers.

The second focus area is making that data available to the vendor community to create consumer-facing apps.

We expect tangible benefits to be realised from the Hira programme in early 2023.

A national programme with line of sight to better healthcare access and equity is the sponsored data initiative that has recently been extended to enable free browsing for many health-related websites, so that people who cannot afford to buy data get the same access as those that can.

The national cyber security programme is an increasingly important part of the data and digital infrastructure and the programme recently appointed Sonny Taite as National Chief Information Security Officer.

What success looks like
We will know we have been successful when we can point at a thriving New Zealand digital health sector providing borderless services where our workforce can do their best wherever they are, and consumers have more control of their healthcare experience. 

It is an exciting time to be in the digital health sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. The journey has begun, and we have mapped a path. Yes, it will be a time of challenge, but it is also a time of great opportunity.

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

This View is an edited version of Stuart Bloomfield's speech at Digital Health Week NZ 2022.

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

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