Digital underpins national pelvic mesh service

eHealthNews.nz: National Systems & Strategy

Sunday, 10 September 2023

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

A national digital capability, designed with consumers, underpins the New Zealand Female Pelvic Mesh Service.

The nationwide service opened in April to provide support and treatment for women suffering complications from surgery involving pelvic mesh.

People can be referred into the service from anywhere, and health navigators and nurse specialists in two hubs in Ōtautahi Christchurch and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland coordinate their care, which can include pain management, continence care, allied therapies, counselling and surgery.

More than 1000 women in New Zealand are impacted by surgical mesh and Sue French, programme manager New Zealand Female Pelvic Mesh Service, says consumer engagement was key to designing and developing a successful project.

Around 140 mesh injured women have been referred into the new service and the digital capability enables a seamless transfer of their information between referrer and service..

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Vidhya Makam, programme lead eMedicines portfolio, says the digital capability was stood up in just five months due to the hard work and dedication of the vendors involved and collaboration between the various regional Te Whatu Ora teams.

They looked at the different referrals systems in place and found there were three main systems all with a point-to-point solutions, with no interconnectivity between them.

Healthlink is used in Northern region, BPAC in Te Manawa Taki, and ERMS in Southern.

“We had to be able to receive referrals from any system, so we worked through the integrations we needed to achieve that goal,” Makam says.

“Though we were working to a tight timeline we all understood the vision for a truly national service and kept the focus on what we had to deliver to the consumer. It was a very collaborative approach and fast-paced.”

Referrers now use a standard form to refer into the national service and indicate which hub the woman wants to go to.

French says agreeing a referral standard was critical and co-designing this with mesh injured consumers and health stakeholders ensured the standard was validated.

The women have been through significant trauma so getting their input into what questions could be asked and what key information should go into the referral made the process “much richer”, French says.

Referral information is fed into the Orion care pathways tool to triage and refer into necessary services.

Clinicians at the Auckland and Christchurch hubs have also been provided access into each other’s regional clinical portals to access information on patients in their care.

Te Whatu Ora digital suppliers engagement lead Jim Brown says the digital capability is a great example of an agile development that delivered a minimum viable product that can continue to be iterated and improved.

“One of the key functions of the service is, ‘I tell my story once’ and that is then augmented rather than repeated,” he says.

French says the ultimate aim is for women to be able to self-refer into the service.

“The focus has always been on what we need to provide to the consumer, as it has to be seamless for them,” she says.