CIO Interview: Setting up for success

VIEW - Shayne Tong, chief digital officer, Auckland DHB

I have two key priorities. The first is to drive strategic healthcare leadership and direction in Auckland DHB and Northern Region DHB’s at the Executive level. And the second is to lead Auckland DHB’s Health Information & Technology (HIT) teams in digital healthcare transformation, digital innovation, cloud acceleration, advanced analytics and data science, and service delivery excellence.

Since becoming chief digital officer of Auckland DHB in February 2017, we have developed an Auckland DHB Digital Strategy and established an Auckland DHB Digital Investment Board to ensure the successful delivery of services and alignment to our regional digital healthcare transformation.

Over that time, I’ve restructured my leadership team, bringing in significant corporate and industry experience from outside health and the public sector. 

My primary driver was to bring in fresh innovative thinking and experience with a strong focus on data, analytics and digital to ensure we transform into a data driven, digital healthcare system.  

Huge credit to my team, because if we want chief digital officers to take on broader executive level roles, both regionally and nationally, they need a strong functional team behind them. I’m so passionate about setting people and teams up for success, providing them with clear purpose and direction, and empowering them to deliver high quality outcomes.

A new foundation
We’ve recently received approval for our Hospital Administration Replacement Project and have selected a preferred provider to replace our current patient administration systems.

The new system will provide transformational service delivery change, a strong foundation that will feed into other core and clinical systems. It will also be cloud based, allowing us greater mobility and care coordination for our clinicians and patients, the likes of which  we haven’t seen before.

We’re also doing a lot of work around going paperlite and the automation of manual workflows and care pathways, which the PAS will also enable as our new foundation.

We’re modernising our data functions and adopting cloud capabilities centred on Microsoft Azure and PowerBI. On our hybrid cloud platform, we’ve deployed a real-time view of hospital operations used by our Integrated Operations Centre team.

Most recently, we’ve developed a new self-service capability for our clinical services which combines the best of DataOps, modern business intelligence tools such as PowerBI and safely democratises data for business users to self-serve. This has transformed our business’s relationship with their data, allowing them to access the information they need, without IT being in the middle.

We’re also investing in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with prototypes currently underway for a number of uses including detecting Sleep Apnoea, using transfer learning methods and building clinical insights from clinical text data using cloud based cognitive services.

A regional approach
In the Northern Region we operate as one region, with one digital healthcare strategy, and the long-term aim of reducing demand for hospital beds and length of stay and bringing care closer to home.

The region has a 10 year IT Strategic Plan that is aligned to a regional 20-25 year Long Term Investment Plan. 

At all levels I provide strong authentic and influencing leadership, within both the Northern Region and Auckland DHB governance structures, and design and delivery authorities to shape and guide our IT strategic direction and execution. 

When procuring a new PAS, we worked closely with our regional DHB’s on requirements and the decision-making process.  For the Northern Region DHB’s to be an integrated and joined up healthcare system, there needs to be a strong focus on data and interoperability, not necessarily having the same system. By working together on the big building blocks, we can leverage the power of the region and ensure any investment is in line with future strategic needs.

I’m a strong believer in our regional construct and shared services. Leveraging our regions’ capabilities allows a Chief Digital Officer with a passion to truly focus on the customers’ needs around data and digital. And that’s where I add value.

A silver lining
This regional collaborative approach has further deepened with the arrival of Covid-19. I’m the executive lead for the Northern Region on all things Covid-19 and vaccination related, from a data and digital perspective.

This role has allowed me to work more holistically from a health system and regional perspective with overview of managed isolation quarantine (MIQ), community testing, primary care, aged residential care and public health. This gives a much more empowering connection as a region because you’re connecting both the digital and the health outcomes you want to achieve.

This will change how the region operates going forward, with a huge number of people now regularly connecting, collaborating and networking.

It’s that full end-to-end health care response which has been so incredible and makes my work even more rewarding.

Shayne Tong is chief digital officer at Auckland DHB

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

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