Technology most powerful lever to improve health outcomes – Health NZ chair

NEWS  - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

Technology is the most powerful lever available to improve health outcomes, Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora board chair Mark Darrow says.

"Our destination is not better technology, the destination is better care, but it is technology, digital, and AI that can help us get there," he told the HiNZ Digital Health AI Summit in Ōtautahi Christchurch on September 17.

Darrow is five months into his role as Chair and spoke about the strategic direction the new Board is setting, and the central role digital plays in that.

He described Online GP appointments, same-day video consultations, AI-assisted prescription and referral systems, robotic surgery, and AI image analysis as tools being used to help deliver care.

“Technology is the biggest opportunity, more than anything else, to make a real difference to health outcomes, and will do so more efficiently than any other lever we have to pull,” he said.

Darrow said the past five to six years of ongoing disruption has left the health system with a "profound legacy debt" across infrastructure, skills, and technology.

The organisation runs 20 different payroll systems and five different recruitment systems, and is still working through historic holiday pay issues in two hospital districts, a process that has been going on for a decade.

He said the Board has approved a technology pathway to invest in an integrated digital platform covering finance, workforce and supply chain functions.

A new Digital Transformation Committee has also been established to oversee delivery of the Health Digital Investment Plan (HDIP), which would be New Zealand’s largest every technology project.

Darrow described the HDIP as a bold plan, but said it is "largely currently an unfunded ambitious goal that lacks specificity and needs a lot more work."

The plan covers radiology modernisation, cloud transformation, clinical desktop modernisation, cybersecurity, data analytics capability, and digital infrastructure.

He said as part of the Digital Committee's creation the digital team was asked to name their central goal and the answer was “one patient, one record”.

"My next question was, what has to be true to achieve that? I know this is not a new question or a new ambition, this has been going on for decades, but we have to finally face up to that as the truism that we have to create,” he told the Summit.

Darrow said the Board is finalising a new organisational strategy, what they call a North Star, that sets out what Health New Zealand is trying to achieve for patients, the workforce, and the wider health system.

“Digital and AI need to support and enable that direction: they are tools to help deliver better care, better access, and better outcomes for New Zealanders - not the destination in themselves,” he said.

"If there was ever a time we needed leadership, clear thinking, collaboration, and to operate as one system, now is surely that time.”

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