Digital central to the future of healthcare – Lester Levy

NEWS - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

Digital is central to the future of healthcare and Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora is focused on getting digital solutions into the hands of clinicians and creating a ‘digital front door’ for patients, commissioner Lester Levy told Digital Health Week NZ 2024. 

The commissioner was speaking against a backdrop of cost cutting at Health NZ, including a proposal to reduce the number of data and digital roles by 47 percent in order to save $100 million annually.

“I’ve been in this role for four months, and while the journey is challenging, I am confident we can restore Health New Zealand's performance,” Levy told the audience.

“We are focusing on getting the organisation back to budget, which requires difficult but necessary cost-cutting measures.”

Levy highlighted two key aspects of Health NZ’s ‘reset’ as being devolution and clinical engagement. 

“Healthcare has been overly centralised,” he said. 

“We are devolving decision-making and resources to the regions: we are looking for decisions to be made locally as much as possible, and resources to be held locally as much as possible.”

Levy talked about the need for rapid adoption of digital solutions to enhance patient care and organisational efficiency. 

“Digital is not just important, it is central to the future of healthcare,” Levy said.

“The centre of gravity in healthcare has been hospitals, but with modern technology, we can safely move services to homes and community settings.

“We also want to get solutions for our patients that they can have the digital experience, and we would like to move to a digital front door. So we are looking to make very significant steps in terms of digital and it is going to require some significant investment.”

He said past investments in administrative systems had been made at the expense of clinical utility and that the organisation needs pragmatic and speedy implementation of digital tools into the hands of clinicians.

“We are looking for solutions that are able to be implemented quickly,” Levy explained.

He promised high levels of clinical involvement, saying announcements about this will be made in the coming weeks. 

“New Zealand has a good system that has fallen into disrepair, and our role is to fix it—with digital at the heart of our efforts,” he said.

Levy could not attend Digital Health Week in person because he had to appear before the health select committee the following day on December 4, where he told MPs that staff cuts at Health NZ were “unfortunate” and “heart -breaking”, but the reality of trying to balance the organisation’s books.

Image: Health New Zealand commissioner, Lester Levy speaking at Digital Health Week NZ 2024

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