National public cloud platforms deployed for health

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Two national public cloud platforms for the health sector have been launched and will host components of the National Data Platform.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure sector platforms have both been deployed this year as part of the Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora hybrid multi-cloud programme.

Hybrid multi-cloud is a mixed computing, storage, and services environment made up of on-premise, private and public cloud services.

eHealthNews reported last October that the national hybrid multi-cloud programme had been allocated $4.55 million to build national cloud platforms. At that time, up to 80 percent of Health NZ applications were on-premise.

Senior responsible officer for the sector platform delivery phase of the hybrid multi-cloud programme, Steve Miller, says the launch of the new cloud platforms is a “crucial step towards a modern, resilient and adaptable health IT ecosystem that best serves our communities”.

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The AWS platform will host components of the National Data Platform (NDP) and is also expected to host the Aotearoa Immunisation register, National Bowel Screening data, and the Hira marketplace.

The first data sets on the NDP are the Medicines Data Repository (MDR) and the Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment (CVDRA).

The latest NDP update says these are the start of the NDP journey to “become the common place for access to highly curated and analytically ready Te Whatu Ora data”.

“Work is underway to define the roadmap beyond this first horizon. From June 2024 we will start to increase access to the platform and add more data - but we must balance the delivery of this value with ensuring that we do not compromise on privacy and security,” it says.

The refreshed NDP timeline says that in April, data engineers will have access to raw MDR and CDVR data and a limited set of business users will get access later in the month as part of the alpha release.

Chief data officer Kari Jones tells eHealthNews this will enable Health NZ to undertake planning and reporting relating to those data sets.

“The initial phases of the NDP have prioritised internal uses focused on health analytics, operational performance, and strategic planning,” she says.

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