SmartHealth stopped at Waikato DHB
Sunday, 8 April 2018
eHealthNews editor Rebecca McBeth
PICTURE: SmartHealth was an online doctor service
 Funding pressure and lack of uptake or reduced emergency department attendance means the online doctor service will not be continued and the procurement process investigated.
Waikato District Health Board is stopping its SmartHealth online doctor service at the end of this month due to the high cost and a lack of uptake and results.
The service is provided through HealthTap, a US-based technology provider. The DHB’s contract with HealthTap comes to an end on 13 May and will not be renewed.
SmartHealth included a free out-of-hours online doctor service, plus online outpatient consultations with a hospital specialist, both provided on patients’ mobile phones and smart devices through HealthTap. These will both cease from 30 April.
Interim chief executive Derek Wright says staff recommended to the board that they not renew the contract for a further year.
“While the Board did not take this decision lightly, when we are currently struggling to meet the current demand in our hospitals within our budget, they felt the $7.2 million cost of renewing the contract was not justified, particularly in our current financial situation,” says Wright.
“While HealthTap itself was a useful service and many of our patients who used it were very positive about the experience, we didn’t engage our clinicians effectively in how best to use the product in their area, and there were technical teething troubles early on.
“We had very ambitious targets for the rollout of this service but only 10,000 people signed up for SmartHealth, considerably fewer than expected. While the free out-of-hours doctors’ service has been popular with those who have used it, it has not resulted in fewer attendances at the hospital’s Emergency Department, which was one of our aims.”
The DHB had already begun its end-of-trial review of the HealthTap service, carried out by EY, which is due to be completed by the end of May, and the Office of the Auditor General is also investigating the HealthTap procurement process.
However, Wright says the board needed to make the decision prior to the end of the existing contract with HealthTap.
He says patients who had found the service helpful would be disappointed, but that the board is still committed to the principles of virtual healthcare because of its large rural and remote population.
“We may look at how we provide this kind of service in the future, and the reviews will certainly help guide us in that. We have learned lessons from how we rolled out this service and in future will involve our clinicians and community before we look at new ways of working,” Wright says.
People signed up to SmartHealth will be contacted by the DHB and advised of the decision and recommended options for accessing health information, out-of-hours care and hospital consultations in future.
The DHB says all patient data created by the doctor in HealthTap is owned by the DHB and has been sent to the board’s patient information system.
The HealthTap software was purchased by Waikato DHB in 2015 under the leadership of disgraced former chief executive Nigel Murray, who has since resigned.
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