Te Whatu Ora moving to fewer better national platforms and services

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Te Whatu Ora is focused on "driving a rationalisation around fewer better national platforms and national services”, and moving from pilots to “innovation at scale”, Leigh Donoghue says.

The chief data and digital spoke at the MTANZ HealthTech Conference on June 26, where he said there has been massive structural underinvestment in data and digital health in New Zealand.

“One of the first tasks is to … deal with the underinvestment, and enable the organisation to think and operate in a very different way,” he told the audience.

“We will focus on fewer simpler platforms leveraging what we have rather than driving wider variation.”

Donoghue said when he started at Te Whatu Ora on May 1, 2023 there were 1600 data and digital projects in the pipeline, all developed with slightly different aims, affordability and investment priorities. This way of doing things created duplication and variation across the country.

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The new organisational structure meant a central team could reprioritise these projects, and channel investment in line with national priorities.

“We need fewer better platforms across the landscape. We cannot continue driving more pilots to build on to the complexity that exists today,” he said

“This will only work if we work in partnership, and big change requires big partnerships.”

Te Whatu Ora is working to simplify the number of touch points into the organisation and provide clear lines for engagement.

“We are moving to nationally-led more strategic approaches to relationships,” he said,

“This is not business as usual, and we would ask you to work with us, not around us, because there are deeply entrenched traditional ways of working and we need to come together to create this once in a generational shift.”

Donoghue said Te Whatu Ora will also be taking a much more focused approach to innovation and “move from pilots to innovation at scale". 

“There are some big opportunities for us in this space, but we want to make sure that we do not have uncontrolled innovation,” he explained.

The organisation is setting up better processes to shorten the cycle of innovation and allow for faster application.

“The innovation cycle of technology development is accelerating. We need to simplify our process and take steps to make the right innovations accessible more widely more quickly.”

He also said the national organisation needs to build new skills and strategic capability inhouse.

The inhouse team will be equity-led and focused on levelling the floor, simplifying the landscape, and leveraging what is has in order to accelerate delivery.

Donoghue said data and digital services need to evolve their approach to focus on “good, better great”, with great as the longer term ambition, but starting with a minimum viable product.

“We need to create capability and capacity for change. We have a health sector that is fully stretched at the moment, so freeing up capacity is critically important. It is not simply about saving money, but a focus for us will be how we free up clinical time.”

Donoghue said change at this scale is a multi-year journey. “This is the best part of a decade program of change,” he said.

Picture: Te Whatu Ora chief data and digital Leigh Donoghue speaking at the MTANZ HealthTech Conference

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