New Digital Blueprint Reimagines Primary Care in Aotearoa

SECTOR UPDATE - Collaborative Aotearoa 

Collaborative Aotearoa has recently launched a revised model of care for Aotearoa. Pou Ora | Pillars of Health is a reviewed and reimagined version of Healthcare Home. The Collaborative team proudly co-designed this model with their sector partners, practices, clinicians and people with lived experience.  

The new model has a large digital and technology focus driving the creation of a digital blueprint, which includes Collaborative Aotearoa’s digital technology vision as an organisation, with the aspiration to transform the way general practices and community health providers deliver primary and community healthcare. 

The Pou Ora | Pillars of Health Digital Blueprint, developed in close partnership with general practice teams, Primary Health Organisation, digital health vendors and Collaborative Aotearoa lived-experience advisors, sets out a bold and practical pathway to create a digitally mature, connected, and sustainable primary healthcare system. The blueprint responds to the sector’s increasing demand for tools that reduce administrative burden, enable proactive care, and empower a skilled and culturally safe workforce.

“The momentum for digital innovation in Aotearoa is strong, but we must take an equity-led approach that ensures technology enhances, not replaces the relationships in care,” said Ny Brunenberg the blueprint’s author and Strategic Project Manager, Digital Health Lead at Collaborative Aotearoa.

The digital blueprint is organised around five key workstreams within the model of care: Access to Acute Care, Innovation and Sustainability, Proactive and Preventative Care, Workforce, and Collaboration. The digital blueprint highlights a range of current and emerging digital opportunities that span the full spectrum of care delivery. These include the use of AI-powered tools, the development of new clinical triage systems, safe symptom checkers, and the implementation of equity-informed, fully enabled patient portals. It also explores the delivery of cultural safety and wellbeing programmes for staff through digital platforms, the use of interoperable care plans and virtual collaboration tools across providers. 

The digital blueprint highlights findings from Collaborative Aotearoa’s national AI in Primary Care Survey, which confirms growing adoption of AI tools across general practice, particularly in inbox management, documentation, and triage. AI will continue to transform healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand; Collaborative Aotearoa role is to ensure health providers adopt technology that aligns with their models of care and is clinically and culturally safe. 

“Collaborative Aotearoa continues to be the only organisation in our sector who is focused on clinically and culturally safe adoption of AI and other digital health technologies” said Andrew Swanson-Dobbs, co-Chair of Collaborative Aotearoa. “This blueprint provides the sector with tangible ways to embed digital tools that uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi, improve timely access, and strengthen whānau-centred care.”

This digital blueprint is for us all, the digital health vendors, the practices delivering are and sector leaders looking for opportunities on how to improve model of care workflows through adoption of technology. 

Collaborative Aotearoa welcomes partnerships with PHOs, digital innovators, and kaupapa Māori providers to bring this vision to life. If you are interested, please get in touch today. 

Source: Collaborative Aotearoa media release

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