National oral health project to unify fragmented data and systems

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth 

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has kicked off a project to standardise oral health data and systems across the country, addressing years of fragmentation that prevents data sharing and equitable access to care.

The initiative, backed by the Oral Health Clinical Network, is initially focused on unifying operational code sets used in the Titanium patient management system, which has 19 different instances running nationwide.

Doug Healey, product owner for Titanium Oral Health at Health NZ, says the number of Titanium instances and inconsistent data standards means standardisation is a major challenge.

Regions having developed their own coding systems over time, so a tooth extraction might be coded as "001" in Tairawhiti, "ext" in Northland, or "##*" in Taranaki, he explains.

This means that oral health professionals cannot access patient information across different systems, creating problems when people move between areas.

"The biggest problem that clinicians have is that they cannot share patient information or track care across regions," Healey says. 

"Patients often lose their continuity of care when they move."

Healey says data quality issues also create problems with national reporting as duplicate patient records can be created because one patient appears on multiple system instances.

The project team has collected all operational code sets across the country in just two weeks, a task initially estimated to take a year, which involved visiting clinicians and hospitals nationwide to gather the information.

All of these codes are now going to be mapped to the Australian Dental Association (ADA) standards to create consistency.

Healey says that 38 percent of existing codes already map to the ADA standards, with around half capable of being remapped. 

Eight clinicians from across the country have volunteered to participate in a nationwide working group to review and align the remaining code sets. 

This seven-week process starts this month – November 2025 – and will involve looking at around 10,000 lines of coding data in a shared digital environment.

Once codes are standardised, oral health information can start feeding into the Health Data Platform. 
Healey says getting high quality consistent national data will help tell the story of oral health across the motu and highlight inequities in care delivery and access that can then be addressed.

In the future, the plan is also to standardise onto four regional instances of Titanium. 

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