Clinical leadership model essential to digital modernisation – HNZ chair

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth 

A new clinical leadership model is part of a devolved operating structure that is essential to the success of Health New Zealand’s digital modernisation plan, the organisation’s board chair Lester Levy says.

Speaking at Digital Health Week 2025, Levy said the new model will require clinician involvement across all Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora decisions, from patient care to traditionally management-only areas.

Participation will be along a continuum from ‘clinically led’ to ‘clinically engaged’ to ‘clinically involved’, depending on the decision.

"Every decision that we make has some fundamental clinical impact,” Levy said.

He told attendees that for the new 10-year Health Digital Investment Plan (HDIP) to be successful there needs to be cultural shift, described as the "software of the organisation".

The plan was announced at the conference by the Minister of Health on November 25, alongside the creation of a Centre for Digital Modernisation of Health.

"We have this plan to actually reconfigure, totally revolutionise our whole data and digital system, but in order to successfully do that, we have to reconfigure and revolutionise the other software, the software that I am talking about."

The devolved operating model aims to move decision-making and resources as close to frontline action as possible, within a framework that is "nationally consistent, regionally coordinated and locally delivered”, Levy told attendees.

"It will be a bottom-up budget: these are the resources people have and they will work out how to deploy the resources in order to make the outcomes that we are looking for."

He said the cultural transformation required is a significant challenge as the current organisational culture is "a little bit of a federation" rather than one unified organisation.

Levy described the new HDIP as addressing "a very significant technical deficit and digital and data deficit" within Health NZ. For example, the organisation operates 21 separate payroll systems, making real time reporting very difficult.

The aim is to create an integrated, interoperable system enabling real-time management across all operations. 

"With artificial intelligence, with innovation, with high levels of investment, the kind of products and opportunities that are coming through have got massive productivity elasticity," he said.

Image: Health NZ board chair Lester Levy speaking at Digital Health Week 2025

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