$1.8 billion funding approved under Health Digital Investment Plan

NEWS  - eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth

Funding of $1.8 billion has been committed to four business cases as part of the Health Digital Investment Plan (HDIP), which has a total estimated cost of $7.4 billion over ten years.

These include single stage business cases for radiology digital modernisation worth $602m and clinical desktop modernisation at $466m.

Also the cloud hosting and workload modernisation programme at $249m as well as a programme business case for corporate experience worth $524m - $585m.

Health New Zealand national director of digital services and technology Gary Baird says funding sources for these programmes include $300 million in HDIP operational expenditure; existing funding streams such as Health New Zealand depreciation funding, and benefit realisation.

At the Technology Users Summit on October 13, Baird said Health New Zealand had those four business cases approved in less than 12 months with all four moving into execution.

"We now need to maintain that momentum so that we can unite the health system in one digital ecosystem,” he said.

The combined investment is already more than the Inland Revenue (IR) tax system transformation.

Baird, chair of Health NZ’s board Mark Darrow and chair of the board’s Digital Transformation Committee Greg James were all involved in the IR project.

Baird told the Summit that the pace of progress at Health NZ is significant given the complexity of the environment which is "highly fragmented, often aged, and not overly stable”.

Compared to the IR transformation, which involved consolidating around 70 applications into one unified tax system, the health challenge is exponentially larger.

In a keynote address, Darrow said the HDIP remains largely unfunded, but that government support is strong and digital transformation is critical for the health system.

"While our Health Digital Investment Plan is a bold plan, it is still largely an unfunded ambitious goal that lacks specificity and prioritisation that needs a lot more work," he said.

However he told attendees that the first two years are definitely funded and it has political will behind it, with annual funding uplifts from the Minister of Finance and Minister of Health.

"There is definitely buy-in from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet," he said. 

"There is a really massive willingness from government and our funders to invest to save."

HDIP covers a broad portfolio including radiology modernisation, cloud transformation, clinical desktop modernisation, cybersecurity, data and analytics, and digital infrastructure. A Centre for Digital Modernisation has been established to lead delivery and coordinate across those programmes.

Grant Lyons, commercial lead for the HDIP at the Centre for Digital Modernisation, said one of the conditions when Cabinet approved the 10-year, $7.4 billion plan, was that the centre would have to engage with the supplier market in a different way.

He said the organisation plans to bring its thinking and problem definitions to market and invite constructive challenge from suppliers.

Artificial intelligence capabilities are being built into the programmes or work, with AI integration already being considered as part of radiology modernisation.

The cloud modernisation programme, which involves migrating more than 10,500 servers, is also under way, with a supplier panel being established. Lyons said they think it is going to be a 10-year job, but they are looking at ways to accelerate the timeline.

Darrow said that the pace of technological change makes long-term planning difficult, describing HDIP as a living document that has already been “reimagined and reworked a year after being written”.

"Because we are so far behind the 8-ball and we have got a terrible legacy debt in digital, that provides an opportunity to leapfrog," he said. 

"We can potentially pass a lot of the legacy systems that other people have adopted and leapfrog into something even better."

The Tech Users Summit was put on by the Technology Users Association NZ and the Digital Health Association.

Hear more from Gary Baird at the Digital Health Week Conference in Auckland Nov 18-19, 2026.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

You’ve read this article for free, but good journalism takes time and resource to produce. Please consider supporting eHealthNews by becoming a member of HiNZ, for just $17 a month.

Read more National Systems & Strategy news

Return to eHealthNews.nz home page