Health to increase focus on innovation and new tech - strategy

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

The NZ Health Strategy 2023 says the health system will increase its focus on innovation and new technologies to accelerate better care, use of resources and health outcomes.

The strategy sets out the direction for the health system over the next ten years and identifies six priorities; voice at the heart of the system, flexible appropriate care, valuing our workforce, a learning culture, a resilient and sustainable system, partnerships for health and wellbeing.

Priority 4 – ‘a learning culture’ - outlines how the system will embrace innovation, data and new technologies.

“The health system will increase its focus on innovation and new technologies to accelerate better care, use of resources and health outcomes,” it says.

“Effective technologies will be more readily adopted, with easier routes to implementation, proportionate regulation and stronger feedback processes to share learning.

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“Integrated data systems with robust data standards allow knowledge to be inferred from clinical data using a continuous process of analytics and insights. Clinicians will have real-time access to this knowledge and use it to inform decision-making.”

The strategy says that realising a ‘learning health system’ depends on the quality of data and data systems, and having the expertise to interrogate and interpret data and translate it into meaningful knowledge.

“Data that draw from sources such as high-quality clinical registries, electronic health records and ‘the internet of things’ all provide opportunities to embed interventions within health care systems and provide evidence for their effectiveness within real-world settings.”

It outlines a ten-year ambition in which new national functions will drive continuous improvement and support the development and implementation of new technologies.

This could include establishing a new system-wide innovation function to “develop and disseminate knowledge on what works, to promote new practice and provide targeted support for improvement”.

Also, creating a more direct role for the health system in developing, assessing and incubating new models of care and technologies, alongside a process to accelerate their uptake.

The priority to create ‘a resilient and sustainable system’, talks about implementing existing technology at scale to improve system operations, such as the use of digital staffing rosters and planning tools.

“There is significant potential gain through technologies that already are in use in other health systems – the best models for our system need to be identified and rolled out consistently,” it says.

While innovation occurs throughout the system, it is patchy and has not been scaled and disseminated nationally.

“Technology that is common in other sectors, such as the use of personal digital devices, has not been embraced, and newer technologies such as precision medicine, nanotechnology and ‘the internet of things’ are in their infancy,” it says.

The strategy document also says that technological change means the system must “think radically and differently” about the types of skills needed to care for the future population.

This includes re-thinking how to use the health workforce, to be adaptive to emerging technologies and digital tools and incentivise ways of working that will deliver the most equitable health outcomes.


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