Primary Healthcare Limited (PHCL), the not-for profit operator of general practices across Waikato and Taranaki, will begin controlled rollout of Valentia Technologies’ OctansCare AI-powered patient access and engagement services across some of its practices, as part of its ongoing work to explore practical ways of supporting patients and general practice teams.

The OctansCare will enable PHCL to provide around-the-clock AI-powered patient access and engagement services, giving patients more flexible ways to engage with their practice, including through AI voice services. The new capability will complement the myindici patient portal, which is already used extensively by PHCL patients.

Deputy Chief Executive, Batami Pundak, said PHCL is looking forward to the benefits the new AI-driven capability will bring for both patients and staff.

“As part of the Pinnacle network, PHCL serves as a hub for innovation and transformation. We test models of change to understand what works in real general practice settings. Implementation of OctansCare with Valentia will help us explore how AI-supported tools could improve access for patients, support our teams, and enhance patient-centred care for the communities we serve,” said Mrs Pundak.

“AI-driven digital front doors are being adopted rapidly across New Zealand primary care, and the OctansCare platform is playing a vital role in enabling practices to increase capacity, improve productivity and deliver a better user experience for patients,” said Malik Rizwan, Virtual Care Strategy Lead, Valentia Technologies.

OctansCare is designed to support healthcare organisations with intelligent patient engagement, AI-assisted reception services, digital triage, workflow automation and integration with existing digital health platforms. By enabling patients to interact with services through modern digital and voice-based channels, OctansCare helps practices manage demand more effectively while improving the overall patient journey.

This  PHCL initiative reflects the increasing role of AI-enabled tools in New Zealand’s primary care sector, where practices are seeking new ways to improve timely access, reduce administrative pressure and support sustainable models of care.

Source: Valentia Technologies media release

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Medical AI scribes have the potential to change the way clinicians take medical notes. By automatically converting patient-clinician conversations and generating structured clinical notes for electronic health records, they can reduce administrative tasks for clinicians, enabling them to focus more on their patients. AI scribes are also purported to increase accuracy and standardisation and support up-to-date patient records.

The most advanced systems use a combination of AI techniques (speech recognition, natural language processing, and large language models) to interpret, summarise and format medical conversations.

With the potential of AI scribes comes important risks to consider, including to privacy, security, data sovereignty, patient consent, as well as through bias, inaccuracy, and “hallucinations”. It can be difficult to manage these risks as they haven’t yet been fully understood or quantified.

This research is timely given the recent endorsement of two AI scribe tools by the National AI and Algorithm Expert Advisory Group. To help promote the safe and effective deployment of this technology, Assoc Prof. V Selak (UoA) and a team from HealthNZ/Te Whatu Ora (HNZ/TWO) have received HRC funding to develop a roadmap for their safe, effective, and equitable use in Aotearoa. 

One key part of our study is to hear directly from clinicians and healthcare managers working across NZ, all of whom are invited to complete an anonymous online 5-10 minute survey: https://redcap.auckland.ac.nz/surveys/?s=RXPY38PXC3CA774Y. Participants don’t need to have used an AI scribe themselves.

“We will start by reviewing the available evidence and then survey clinicians and health managers to understand service-specific use cases, preferences for features, benefits/risks, training needs and implementation needs. We will also facilitate hui with experts and other stakeholders; clinical, consumer, Māori, Pacific, management, information technology, and health professional regulation representatives as part of developing guidance on risks and the roadmap”. – Assoc Prof V Selak.

The resulting AI scribe Roadmap for Aotearoa will include a set of recommendations for optimising the use of AI scribes in clinical settings across Aotearoa, tailored to the unique needs and context of our healthcare system, to ensure that these tools support quality healthcare for all New Zealanders.

Source: AI in Health Research Network media release

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Bupa New Zealand has announced the full rollout of its AI-supported care platform Nexus AI, designed to help frontline teams deliver safer, more responsive and consistent care and services to its residents.

The technology has been introduced to support frontline decision-making, by giving Bupa’s carers and nurses faster access to information, policies and organisational knowledge in the moments it matters most.

By reducing time spent searching across multiple systems, the platform is helping teams spend more time focused on people and less time on administration.

Already, the AI-supported platform is helping employees:

• Access policies, procedures and guidance instantly
• Respond more quickly and consistently to resident needs
  
• Reduce administrative workload and duplication
  
• Spend more time focused on care, support and customer interaction
  

Bupa New Zealand Clinical and Quality Director Sandy Turnwald said that platform was designed to make every day work simpler and support better outcomes for residents.

“At Bupa we have extensive guidance and procedures covering all aspects of care, from wound dressing to requirements for resident van trips. Previously, employees needed to know where information was stored across multiple platforms. With Nexus AI, our people can simply ask a question and quickly access the relevant current information and reference documents,” she says.

“It removes barriers for our people and helps frontline teams make more informed decisions, while always maintaining human oversight and professional judgement.”

Importantly, the technology is designed to support clinical, operational and care teams, not automate care itself. Decisions remain firmly in the hands of trained employees and care professionals.

"Healthcare is human. It requires compassion, connection and professional judgement. Technology should support our people to work smarter and reduce administrative burden, so they can focus on what matters most, our residents,” says Sandy,

"AI helps reduce friction by surfacing important information faster. Ultimately, it’s about enabling safer, more connected and responsive care and service delivery," she says.

Since becoming fully operational, the platform has also improved collaboration across teams, reduced time spent resolving queries and made organisational knowledge easier to access and apply consistently.

As with any AI tool, Bupa will continue refining the platform alongside frontline employees to ensure it remains safe, practical and focused on delivering meaningful improvements in care and customer outcomes.

The rollout follows Bupa’s recent implementation of its digital Deterioration Early Warning System (DEWS) across all its care homes, a clinical decision-support system that helps care teams identify early and subtle signs that a resident’s health may be declining. 

“Like many aged residential care providers across New Zealand, the sector is facing significant challenges, including funding pressures, significant demand, and increasing complexity of care needs,” says Sandy.

“In this environment, digital solutions that simplify processes, support our people, and help teams spend more time focused on resident care are more important than ever,” added Sandy.”

Source: Bupa media release

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To help enterprises deploy tailored, secure, and production-ready AI, global digital experience leader Fujitsu has revealed its strategic approach that combines the world's leading models with its own proprietary technology.

Central to this approach are Fujitsu’s strategic partnerships in Japan with both Anthropic and OpenAI. These collaborations allow Fujitsu to integrate the most appropriate AI model into customer solutions, ensuring they are tailored to specific enterprise requirements for performance, data sovereignty, security, and compliance.

Separately, Fujitsu has developed self-evolving multi-AI agent technology that enables AI agents to collaborate and continuously learn from execution results, human feedback, policy changes and specification updates.

It allows the AI to adapt and improve over time, automating the enhancement of domain-specific models. In testing, this improved model accuracy by an average of 28 points.

For healthcare organisations, it signals how AI could better support complex clinical and operational information environments, including the structured extraction of information from medical records and test results.

These global developments reveal Fujitsu’s strategic blueprint for the next wave of enterprise AI. 

Read the full global releases below 

• Fujitsu signs strategic partnership with Anthropic
• Fujitsu to accelerate AI transformation in Japan's enterprise sector through collaboration with OpenAI
• Fujitsu develops self-evolving multi-AI agent technology that learns and adapts to business operations

Source: Fujitsu media release

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Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has consolidated multiple systems inherited from over 20 supporting subsidiaries, District Health Boards and the Ministry of Health covering clinical, finance, payroll, supply chain, procurement and asset management data.   

Director of health analytics Delwyn Armstrong says the organisation now has nationally available Qlik apps driving transformation and monitoring performance. 

“Qlik acts as not only a data visualisation tool, but also a secure distributor of data across the country, a self-service tool for clinicians and managers to answer their own questions, a forecaster, scenario tester and even a data collection tool,” she says.   

Armstrong says health is hugely complex and data can be explored in a myriad of different ways depending on where you sit in the system. 

"The Planned Care application alone has over 200 pages within it, each of which can be mined for insights in thousands of ways." 

Real-time data replaces monthly spreadsheets 

Health NZ serves over 100,000 employees and manages over 6,000 digital systems, making data consolidation and visibility critical for effective operations and decision-making across the health system. 

Armstrong says when the organisation was established in July 2022, it required data and analytics in near real-time to understand waitlist sizes, acute demand and other care pathways.  

“We also need to understand how access to and quality of care vary by geographic area and for priority population groups,” she says. 

Previously, national data collections had a lag of two to three months, but the new analytics platform provides near real-time data feeds covering waitlists, emergency department presentations, inpatient events, operating room efficiency, GP referrals and hospital occupancy. 

“We have taken the approach of building apps underpinned by large data models at the patient level. That means the same app is used for identifying individuals to book through to reporting national performance by ethnic group, rural/urban and other geographic spread, age group, and many other ways,” explains Armstrong. 

“The near real-time data feeds coupled with the analytics platform have been key enablers for healthcare transformation; reducing waitlists, improving acute care responsiveness, improving cancer care pathways, and across all care, reducing unwarranted variation.” 

Improving patient outcomes 

Clinical innovations enabled by the new analytics function include opportunistic vaccination programmes linking vaccination data to real-time hospital admission data and identifying patients not receiving optimal treatment or with undiagnosed kidney disease.  

In February 2025, the World Health Organisation adopted a resolution on ‘promotion of kidney health and strengthening prevention and control of kidney disease’ encouraging member states "to strengthen and integrate the monitoring of kidney disease burden, access to care, quality of care and morbidity and mortality outcomes into national health information systems".    

Nephrologist Andy Salmon says using Qlik to create an interactive national chronic kidney disease dashboard means the country is on track to achieve these purposes, “using integrated data insights to reveal opportunities to optimise kidney disease care for whānau across Aotearoa New Zealand”. 

Armstrong says the platform also enables scenario testing and forecasting for health planners. Users can input variables, such as increasing patient appointments by 10 per week, to determine the impact this would have on wait lists. 

Finance expands access 

Health NZ’s Finance function has expanded access to Qlik apps from regional services to 3,000 budget managers across the organisation, providing real-time budget visibility, enabling managers to monitor cost centres independently. 

"Using these applications has transformed the way of working each month for the accounting team of accountants to review of results," says interim director of finance systems enablement Nicolas Harrison. 

"A key highlight has been a multi-purpose General Ledger app for 3,000 staff providing accurate and timely financial information, overcoming security, privacy, data literacy, training and governance challenges." 

He says the improved quality and access to financial data is a key part of cementing functional teams as enablers, allowing conversations to focus on actionable insights rather than data requests. 

The success could not have been achieved without the support of Acumen BI who contributed skills, knowledge, relationships and hard work to support the project. 

“The impact of our partners at Qlik and Acumen BI has been hugely integral and impactful,” Harrison says. 

A Qlik Cloud environment for national Procurement and Supply Chain analytics also includes 35 applications providing, for the first time, a comprehensive national view of procurement, supply chain and inventory data.   

Dan Gargiulo, Acumen BI managing director says the program is a great example of what is possible when strong data foundations, well-designed analytics, and committed teams come together. 

“We are not just consolidating data; we're giving people across the system the confidence to act on trusted, near-real-time insights quickly and consistently,” he says.

Image: Stuart Bloomfield, director of data and analytics, Health NZ

If you have any questions re the above feature article, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has released a tender worth $4.4 million over three years covering AI reading for screening mammograms and breast density reporting.

The organisation expects AI reading to improve cancer detection rates whilst reducing recall rates and interval cancer rates.

Health Minister Simeon Brown says Health NZ is taking a careful, evidence-based approach to introducing AI into screening and the AI will support, not replace, skilled clinicians.

"Every diagnosis and follow-up decision will continue to include qualified health professionals," he says.

The Request for Proposal is for AI mammography solutions for BreastScreen Aotearoa, and solutions must integrate into the national breast screening programme’s existing blind double-read screening workflow. 

BreastScreen Aotearoa screens around 270,000 women annually, with numbers expected to increase as age extension rolls out to include women up to 74 years old.

Brown says the proposed AI technology would undertake one of the two independent reads currently required in the mammogram assessment process.

He says that international studies show that AI-supported mammogram reading can improve cancer detection rates, including identifying cancers that might otherwise be missed or detected between routine screening rounds.

“As demand for breast screening continues to grow, we need to ensure we are making full use of safe, proven technology to support timely, accurate results for women," says Brown.

The roll-out will be via three-phases, beginning with validation in July 2026. Phase one includes retrospective trials comparing AI reading performance against historical ground truth, including datasets using Māori, Pacific and Asian ethnicity mammograms, followed by prospective trials comparing AI performance against radiologist reading.

Phase two is implementation, including integrating AI solutions into existing breast screening workflows and technical platforms before deploying into production. The final phase covers post-implementation delivery across eight lead providers. 

Solutions must work with all BreastScreen Aotearoa mammogram machine types and integrate with both Sectra PACS and Intelerad systems used across the programme.

Data sovereignty requirements mean that patient health information must remain within New Zealand or Australia jurisdictions and all AI models must be locked, so they cannot learn from production data, with any updates requiring customer approval before release.

The deadline for proposals is 22 June 2026.

This RFP follows the release of an RFI in February this year.

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Valentia Technologies today announced the development of an advanced AI navigation and safety component for OctansCare, its existing digital front-door platform.

The new capability has been designed to help people more safely and confidently navigate complex health and mental health support pathways. Built on advanced research in responsible AI, clinical safety, service navigation, and human-centred design, the component adds a sophisticated layer of AI-assisted intake, guidance, routing, and safeguarding to the OctansCare platform.

Rather than functioning as a general-purpose chatbot, the technology has been developed as a governed AI navigation layer for sensitive health environments. It is designed to support users in describing their needs in natural language and being guided toward appropriate services, support options, or next steps, while maintaining clear medical boundaries, safety controls, and escalation pathways.

The initial focus is on strengthening mental health navigation, helping users identify suitable support pathways and better understand where to go for help. The system is designed with safeguards for high-risk interactions, privacy-aware information handling, culturally safe and locally appropriate guidance, and response controls intended to reduce unsafe, biased, stigmatising, or inappropriate outputs.

A key part of the new capability is its emphasis on responsible deployment in real-world care environments. This includes design considerations for data residency, secure handling of sensitive information, auditability, observability, and alignment with local privacy and governance requirements. The component has also been designed to maintain clear clinical and medical boundaries, ensuring that users are guided toward appropriate care pathways rather than being provided with diagnosis, treatment decisions, or medical advice outside the intended scope.

Valentia Technologies is also working with a major clinical provider in New Zealand on a separate research and development workstream exploring how this AI capability could help open the door to future AI-assisted clinical triage. This work is being approached carefully, with an emphasis on clinical governance, validation, safety, cultural safety, data protection, and appropriate professional oversight.

“AI has significant potential to improve how people access health and mental health support, but only if it is developed with the right safeguards from the outset,” said Malik, Executive Lead at Valentia Technologies. “With this new component for OctansCare, we have focused on building a safety-first AI capability that supports navigation, escalation, and responsible guidance in complex care environments, while respecting medical boundaries, privacy, data residency, and cultural safety.”

The clinical triage workstream is not intended to replace clinicians or automate clinical decision-making. Instead, it is focused on exploring how advanced AI could responsibly support structured intake, prioritisation, and routing, while keeping clinical responsibility within appropriate professional and organisational governance frameworks.

“This is about creating the foundations for safer, smarter access to care,” added Malik. “Mental health and clinical systems are often difficult for people to navigate. Our goal is to use AI responsibly to help people find the right pathway faster, while ensuring that safety, accountability, cultural appropriateness, and clinical oversight remain central.”

The new OctansCare AI component reflects Valentia Technologies’ broader commitment to developing practical, governed AI systems for healthcare, mental health, and human services. Its development is guided by principles of safety, transparency, privacy, cultural respect, local compliance, and responsible innovation in care settings.

Source: OctansCare media release

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Ora Toa PHO is trialling a predictive analytics approach to help identify people at higher risk of undiagnosed respiratory conditions and support earlier outreach, review, and care. 

The primary health organisation is working with Swevnz® Research Science LP to combine patient management system (PMS) data with geospatial and socioeconomic information through the Swevnz® predictive analytics capability. 

Michael Rongo, director of health at Ora Toa, Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, presented the PHO's work at the Digital Health Leadership Forum in Wellington on 12 May 2026. 

He said the approach is designed to help Ora Toa better understand unmet need, emerging risk and where earlier support may be helpful. 

"We use this predictive approach to help us better understand unmet need and where health risks might be emerging," he told the forum. 

"Too often we respond once harm has already occurred or someone is vulnerable or very unwell.

Population health insights allow us to see patterns earlier: chronic conditions, service gaps, emerging risks, and areas where outreach may be needed." 

The Swevnz® capability brings together PMS data with geospatial and socioeconomic data. Its algorithm analyses the combined information to support identification of at-risk populations and areas where earlier action may be helpful. 

As part of the trial, Ora Toa has focused on respiratory conditions because they present a significant health challenge for Māori and Pacific communities, who experience higher rates of respiratory illness compared with other populations. Earlier identification can support earlier clinical review, outreach, and whānau-centred care. 

Rongo said the work with Swevnz® Research Science LP demonstrates how technology can be used to strengthen rather than replace human-centred care. He said the algorithm is a tool to help health teams identify where their attention and resources may be most needed. 

"Digital health must sit with that foundation. It needs to serve the people, not replace," he said. 

"For us, digital innovation is not about chasing technology for technology's sake, it is about asking how it strengthens mana, supports whānau to live well, helps people access care earlier, and supports greater control over their own wellbeing." 

Rongo also highlighted the Whaitua Mapping Tool, developed by Āti Awa Toa Hauora Iwi Māori Partnership Board in partnership with Te Tāhū Hauora (Health Quality & Safety Commission), noting its value in helping communities and health providers better understand the wider determinants of health. 

The tool visualises environmental, social, economic and health data across the region. It can display information such as the locations of vape shops, liquor stores and takeaway outlets and overlay this alongside school locations and deprivation index heat maps. This helps illustrate how lower socioeconomic communities are disproportionately impacted by these factors 

"Health outcomes are shaped long before someone walks through the clinic door," Rongo said. 

"Housing, environment, transport, income, education, food security, and connection all influence wellbeing." 

Rongo said digital success should not be measured by logins, dashboards, or the number of devices deployed. Instead, success should be evaluated by whether the technology saves time, avoids unnecessary travel, builds trust, and improves health outcomes. 

"If iwi are not steering the waka, then technology will reflect someone else's assumptions, someone else's values, someone else's priorities," he said. 

Image: Michael Rongo, director of health at Ora Toa, Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira, presenting at the Digital Health Leadership Forum, May 12.

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New Zealand should position itself as a global leader in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) for healthcare, particularly to address rural access challenges, according to international health expert Ezekiel Emanuel.

Speaking at the nib NZ Health Innovator’s Summit, US writer and oncologist Emanuel said that AI could provide 24-hour access to care in rural and underserved areas by reducing the need for patients to travel to urban centres to access specialist expertise.

"We are at the cusp of the AI era, make no mistake about it. It is not here today, necessarily, but it is going to be here tomorrow and New Zealand can either be a leader or it can be a follower. There's no reason it should not be a leader,” he told the Summit.

Emanuel said that several companies developing AI systems are interested in testing their technology in the real-world and this is an opportunity for New Zealand to pioneer clinical AI implementation.

He also advocated for a single electronic health record system for the country as well as using ambient AI technology nationally to reduce administrative burdens on clinicians.

"You look at almost anything, and either today or certainly by 2030, AI is going to outperform doctors in almost every area," he said. 

"New Zealand needs to be a leader in this space."

Health Minister Simeon Brown spoke at the Summit and said Health New Zealand has established HealthX to accelerate digital health innovations and AI by working with technology companies to rapidly trial new solutions.

He described HealthX as a platform to "partner closely with private sector digital health innovators to find ways that we can rapidly innovate, trial new things in our health system and make sure that Health New Zealand is a place of innovation and opportunity.

"The system does not need more complexity, it needs to focus on the problems that face in front of it, making available tools that make existing processes faster, safer and more efficient, that give clinicians more time with patients and make it easier for New Zealanders to access care when and where they need it," Brown told attendees.

Brown also spoke about the 10-year health digital investment plan released in November which he said identifies where investment in digital technology will lift productivity and signals opportunities for partnership within the health system.

He said there are several innovation initiatives already underway, including AI scribes being rolled out in emergency departments nationwide, genomic testing being brought closer to home and AI being used in screening programmes.

Image: Ezekiel Emanuel speaking at the nib NZ Health Innovator’s Summit

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The HealthX team at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora is working on five initiatives as part of its monthly rollout programme designed to rapidly deploy AI and innovative solutions across the public health system.

Sonny Taite, director of innovation and AI at Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora, outlined the initiatives during a presentation at the Clinical AI in Practice conference in Auckland on April 30, saying the aim of HealthX is to be, “a workforce multiplier to improve care for our communities”.

The five are; AI scribes, remote patient monitoring for heart failure patients, AI-enabled skin lesion assessments, AI-enabled diagnostics, and CoPilot for leadership and digital services.

Taite says the AI scribes programme, launched in September 2025, became the team's first major success story. Initially planned for six or seven emergency departments (EDs), demand from clinicians drove rapid expansion across the country.

"In a very short period… we were in every ED in the country, which when I looked around the world, turns out is world leading for a public health system," Taite said.

The remote patient monitoring (RPM) initiative, rolled out in October, targets heart failure patients and has shown significant improvements in medication management. Without the solution, patients typically take five to six months to reach recommended medication levels. With telehealth and RPM, 80 percent of patients reach optimal levels within six weeks.

The AI-enabled skin lesion assessment programme is aimed at addressing substantial dermatology wait lists across the country and an announcement on this is expected soon.

Taite said HealthX operates under strict criteria for selecting initiatives. Each programme must be clinician-led with clinical champions, demonstrate feasibility within monthly budget constraints, show sufficient impact, and avoid heavy integration requirements with existing systems.

"We are not here to sell to our clinicians, we are actually here to find out what problems they have already solved,” he explained.

The team focuses on three key pressure areas: workforce shortages, rural and remote access challenges, and clinical inefficiencies. The AI scribes programme particularly addresses after-hours documentation work that ED clinicians do.

The programme incorporates security by design, privacy by design and clinical safety protocols.

"We have governance ethics groups closely connected to our team. Sometimes ethics is should we do it, often now ethics is why aren't we doing it? This is the right thing: it is ethically not right not to do it," Taite said.

Looking ahead, Taite envisioned expanding the HealthX model to multiple teams across different organisations while maintaining the same rapid deployment approach. He said the appetite amongst workforce is strong as the team continues to get requests from clinicians nationwide looking to implement AI solutions.

HealthX has also established partnerships to support longer-term research initiatives and pilot programmes that may not fit the monthly deployment schedule. 

Image: Sonny Taite, director of innovation and AI at Health NZ

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Three years ago, I started working with an algorithm I called Smartmāori, extracted from ChatGPT.  

What began as a simple experiment has evolved into something I never expected: a way to operationalise tikanga through artificial intelligence, making technology more accessible and culturally grounded for our people. 

When Health NZ offered 40 Copilot licenses to Hauora Māori Services staff I saw an opportunity so I asked for those 40 licenses, then went back asking for more and we now have 170 amongst our 200 staff.  

Finding your level on the digital shoreline 

I approach everything through a Māori lens first, rather than trying to embellish Māori elements onto existing products. Like our tamariki learning to harvest on the beach, starting with safe pūpū before progressing to kūtai, then diving for kina, and eventually reaching pāua and kōura when they are truly skilled, I see succession in everything. 

You need to identify where everyone is in their digital journey and start there. You can't be ahead of yourself or behind yourself, you are where you are, so I created space for people to sit, observe, and listen without judgment.  

That's where BroPilot came from, giving Copilot a face change to make people curious rather than scared. 

What started as a two-week interim training program while waiting for Microsoft's official sessions has now been running regularly since November last year. 

The first thing I get people to do is put their job descriptions into Copilot to define their KPIs, understand alignments, and clarify reporting structures. Instead of ambiguous weekly goals, we get granular: what exactly are you doing, how many, who is involved, and by when? 

Aligning with tikanga 

I have created personas within the BroPilot whare that align with tikanga principles and others have built their own to reflect their roles and functions.  

Mine include Smartmāori for research and deep thinking, Nanny for warm, human-centred advice on kaupapa, Coco for day-to-day tasks, and Doc for polished, executive-level documents.  

These personas remove deficit thinking and are mana-enhancing. Where Western audits often catch people out for discipline, our approach is about "shaking the trees and lifting the mats." When teams are fatigued, we practice the concept of emptying our pockets of everything unaddressed, being completely honest, reviewing skill sets, and delegating to clear the decks. 

Protecting Mātauranga while enabling access 

I have built agents such as a service improvement tool that provides a rubric for application quality and mana-enhancing feedback. Rather than rejecting poor applications, it guides people to strengthen them. 

One of my most significant creations is He Kāmaka Waiora, based on a 35-year-old document by Dame Naida Glavish. This agent provides practical tikanga-aligned guidance for non-Māori, for the interim, as Māori kaimanaaki become available. 

The beauty is that creators maintain full control of their mātauranga. No one else can access the knowledge within their agents and when people create something useful, their name stays attached to it. 

Humanising the digital experience 

I am not building all these tools myself: I am teaching people to build them for their specific purposes. My training is steeped in tikanga first, if people do not align with protecting our mātauranga, I direct them to mainstream training until they are ready. 

The return on investment should be the people, with efficiency as a byproduct. We are enabling voices that have been missing, particularly our neurodiverse and introverted whānau. People with literacy challenges can now be poets because they can talk to the device: they can be storytellers, articulate feelings, and have a confidant. 

I test as an introvert in everything, but te ao Māori has countered that limitation. When a reluctant Pākehā gentleman left my session with an agent he called Rufus (from Bill and Ted's Adventure) for testing coding insights, I knew we were onto something. 

Pushing potential over perfection 

When people criticise AI because it is not perfect, I remind them: I don't care if it is perfect, it is about the journey. Instead of pushing perfection, push potential.  

Our whānau who are nowhere near their own marae would excel in this space because of how they innovate and think, having multiple ways of looking at problems. 

We have always had to make do with what we have. Give us one capability like Copilot, and we will make it work in ways others have not imagined. I was not even coding six months ago or creating agents two years ago, but I did all of this without permission. 

When I faced resistance, people saying, "that's not Māori," I responded, "cool, you do you" as I will not let others' opinions stop progress. Two years later, those same people are asking for help and manaaki. 

Creating experiences, not just training 

While others focus on numbers and digital enablement, I am creating experiences.  

Last week, I put my out-of-office on with a sign saying the whakawhangaungatanga continues. Fourteen people still turned up and talked to each other and that is when I knew we have built something sustainable. 

BroPilot is not just about making AI accessible, it is about ensuring our people are not left behind in the digital transformation while maintaining the integrity of our tikanga. It is about reciprocity, finding that point where different worldviews can agree and move toward the right thing together. 

That is what I am most interested in: creating pathways for our people to thrive in digital spaces while remaining authentically Māori. 

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A recent conversation with digital health experts left me feeling that it’s hard to gauge AI maturity, or even define it, and so my mind turned to AI myths.  

The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘myth’ as a traditional explanatory story, or a false idea that is commonly believed. Myths abound about health information technology, more so about AI. 

Myth 1 - AI thinks like a human 

There are many types of AI and they have all been developed to process information the way humans do, i.e., they are built to mimic human thought processes. For example, neural networks are built on what is known about how the human brain works. AI is provided with a human-computer interface that is programmed to seem helpful, friendly, polite, eager to please, and seeks reinforcing feedback from the user. AI appears to think like a human. It makes a close approximation, and like a human it makes mistakes and fabricates answers that don’t exist in its database.  

It is tempting to anthropomorphise technology of any kind, more specifically AI. This is evident in the widely contested Turing Test which claims that, if a human using a computer can’t tell if the computer output is from a human or a computer, artificial intelligence exists in that interaction. 

When an interaction with AI becomes frustrating because the AI appears to go on a tangent that the operator is not interested in, but the AI persists, the human is tempted to use the metaphor of a stubborn teenager. When the AI tool presents hallucinations, one is tempted to think about this as a guess from someone who is eager to please.  

AI mimics human thought by design. Its functional maturity is hard to pin down – AI technologies only recently became commercially available en masse, but the technology itself covers a range of sophistication. Has the machine come of age? Not yet.  

Myth 2 - AI is reliable, so we can use it without gathering scientific evidence 

Marketing and commercialisation at scale have led us to believe that sufficient testing has been done for safe implementation and continued use in healthcare contexts. In contrast, medicines and medical devices cannot be implemented in clinical settings unless research has demonstrated their utility, effectiveness, efficiency, and outcomes on the health of those for whom it is prescribed. Some AI tools have been rigorously tested when designed as a medical intervention, e.g., radiology image analysis has been tested for reliability, validity, specificity and scope.  

Narrow AI enables predictions of specific phenomena, while predictive AI uses past data to predict a described future, and generative AI creates new content. Chatbots use conversational AI and the theory of mind AI to produce, such as mental health companions.  

Each clinical application of AI requires rigorous research about the clinical implications, but also about the effects of the AI on how we work, interact with one another and the technology, and how the tools affect work processes, policies, workload, and the cognitive loads and shifts of its users. 

Marketing and commercialisation at scale fill this gap and we respond to the need that the tools fill (if it works, we will use it) – this is a dangerous approach and requires the governance that is rapidly developing in this space.  

Myth 3 - AI makes clinical work easier and quicker 

It feels like it at first. The promise of information systems and technologies in health care has always been to automate the drudgery, simplify work, and augment what we re usually able to achieve in a day’s work. Research on digital health technology implementations reveals a mixed picture of mostly failure and some success. The ‘productivity paradox’ has emerged whereby the promise of easier and quicker work has not been kept, and digitally supported work can become more difficult, time consuming, and less productive than analogue work.  

AI offers the promise of expanding, amplifying, extending, and enhancing clinical work. At first use, it seems to keep this promise. The implementation of AI scribes has seen rapid and eager adoption in Aotearoa New Zealand. Its core function is to relieve clinical staff (doctors, nurses, allied healthcare professionals) of note taking during consultations with patients – it does this well. But AI does not do reasoning unless specific forms of reasoning and critical thinking are part of its programme. Initial signs are there about its utility in this scenario, but the cracks are emerging where some indicate that critical thinking is delayed until the next appointment where the clinician reviews and analyses the AI-recorded summary before starting the consultation.  

An uneasy relationship

Three myths that form our uneasy relationship with AI. AI mimics human thinking – we are still learning how to introduce critical thinking into its programming. For now, we should resist anthropomorphising the technology and sharpen our own critical thinking skills.  

We do not know how reliable it is, especially when it’s not explainable or where the black box of its reasoning hides what it is doing – research is needed to establish reliability and explainability. Until we have enough evidence of the right kinds, our relationship with AI remains awkward – how do you trust a technology?  

AI is still a ‘new kid on the block’ and we don’t know how well it makes clinical work easier or quicker, implementation science research should document this and help us avoid the productivity paradox. In the end, the humans should always be in charge. We bring humanity to clinical work.  

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An artificial intelligence (AI) call centre agent has reduced missed appointments to zero at one GP clinic, while cutting DNA rates by an average of 3 percent across three practices at New Zealand largest primary healthcare provider. 

Tāmaki Health, which operates 52 clinics nationwide and serves over 360,000 enrolled patients, has deployed the AI agent to handle appointment bookings and repeat prescription requests as part of broader AI initiatives across its network. 

Chief executive Lloyd McCann spoke at a recent HiNZ event – from IT to Digital and AI in Health – in Auckland where he told the audience the agent now successfully books about 40 percent of appointments at participating clinics. 

This means patients are not waiting in phone queues for human operators and Net Promoter Scores have improved by 10 to 12 points across the three clinics using the technology to date. 

McCann told the event that most patients still ring either their practice or centralised call centre to try and book an appointment and the second highest volume of inbound calls is for those people wanting to manage or arrange for a repeat prescription. 

The AI agent handles these high-volume, routine calls, freeing human staff for more complex tasks including outbound calls for smoking cessation programmes and cardiovascular disease screening. 

One practice, which already had a low DNA rate of two percent, saw missed appointments drop to zero after implementing the AI reminder system, which calls patients on the day of their appointments. Tāmaki Health is now working on a second language option after feedback and requests from patients. 

McCann said the call centre initiative is one of three major AI programmes at the organisation which has also piloted an AI patient summary system and rolled out AI scribes across its network. 

The patient summary system was developed and piloted with Deloitte and interrogates Tamaki Health's single Medtech Evolution database to provide a summary of key patient information, with a chatbot to answer additional queries about patient records. 

"This had a huge impact on our clinicians lives by surfacing relevant information and useful data at the touch of a button,” he said.  

“It was very well integrated into the clinician's workflow and it is something we are now looking at rolling out at a production level for our clinicians across the network.” 

Tamaki Health's AI scribe programme has also achieved 91-92 percent adoption by clinicians using Heidi Health. 

This has delivered both time savings and productivity improvements, as well as reduced cognitive load and less fatigue at the end of workdays, he said. 

Future plans include expanding the AI call centre agent to handle outbound calls for preventive care programmes and potentially managing more complex inbound calls.  

"The focus for the organisation going forward is to be very thoughtful and deliberate about where we are applying these algorithms so that they solve real world problems for our clinicians and for our patients,” said McCann. 

Image: Tāmaki Health chief executive Lloyd McCann speaking at - Srom IT to Digital and AI in Health

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Hauora Māori Services within Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has transformed Microsoft 365 Copilot into ‘BroPilot’, an artificial intelligence tool grounded in tikanga Māori to support its staff.

The programme, led by Senior ICT Specialist Troy Baker, customised the platform to become a true digital reflection of te ao Māori, using Dame Naida Glavish's Tikanga Best Practice Guidance as its foundational document to create 16 measurable standard operating procedures that reflect Māori culture and values.

"The thing that is really important to me as a Māori is to influence other Māori to adopt AI using mātauranga Māori," Baker says. 

"We started with honest conversations grounded in values and what matters most to people."

Hauora Māori Services teams manage high workloads across reporting, assurance, governance and programme design.

Baker started regular drop-in sessions where staff learn by using real documents in a secure Enterprise Copilot environment. He says this allows people to test prompts and make mistakes without fear.

"We did not want this to feel like a technology programme happening to people," he explains. 

"The focus has been on helping our teams explore AI through real mahi, in ways that reflect how they already work and what they need support with."

The sessions begin with visual exercises such as creating pictures or personas using prompts, then progress to practical applications like putting job descriptions and KPIs into Copilot to create visual representations of goals and roles.

Within the BroPilot "whare", staff have created agents and personas that reflect their roles and functions. Baker’s AI personas include Smartmāori for research and deep thinking, Nanny for warm, human-centred advice on kaupapa, Coco for day-to-day tasks, and Doc for polished, executive-level documents.

Ronald Karaitiana, a team member who completed the training, says he was initially cautious about AI and whether it would dilute thinking, accountability or kaupapa Māori.

"What changed was seeing Troy introduce AI not as a replacement for thinking, but as a partner, positioned within Māori values, governance and accountability," Karaitiana says. 

Karaitiana now uses BroPilot with his favourite persona called Pāua to transform drafts and conversations into executive-facing documents and provide oversight that understands both corporate and governance requirements as well as Māori culture.

Feedback from BroPilot users shows they feel happier and more supported, which Baker hopes will help keep them within the Health NZ whānau.

Sarah Carney, chief technology officer for Microsoft ANZ, says "this is a world-leading example of how to make supposedly “faceless” AI totally relevant to local people and healthcare workers, through really smart and sensitive engagement upfront and a robust governance structure that clearly sets out principles for how it should be used".

Image:  (Top) Troy Baker and Ronald Karaitiana meeting Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the Microsoft AI Tour in Auckland, (Bottom) Senior ICT Specialist Troy Baker speaking at the Microsoft AI Tour in Auckland

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Whakarongorau Aotearoa will launch an AI-powered Welcome service in May 2026 to support people waiting to connect with mental health counsellors through its 1737 and Women's Refuge web chat services. 

The Microsoft Azure AI system gathers background information, helps understand why people are contacting the service and holds them until they connect with a counsellor.

Whakarongorau chief support services officer Anna Campbell says this allows clinicians to focus on care from the first moment of contact.

The telehealth provider manages more than 7,000 interactions daily across its health, mental health and social services, connecting with over 735,000 people across Aotearoa each year. 

Campbell says the organisation is facing growing demand for its services and the complexity of support needed is increasing.

At-risk contacts - people at risk of harming themselves or others - have nearly doubled over the past five years in Whakarongorau's mental health services and these complex interactions now take about 50 per cent longer on average than previously.

"When someone's waiting in a queue and they are in distress, that wait time really matters," says Campbell. 

“It is about making the experience more connected, more responsive and more human, even as demand continues to grow.”

The Welcome service sits at the front of SMS interactions for 1737 and web chat for Women's Refuge services. 

It introduces itself as an AI and callers can choose whether to engage or not. As well as gathering information it can offer non-clinical support like breathing techniques if they agree.

Staff currently start with no information about who they are speaking to on a call, why the person is reaching out, or how urgent the situation is, but the new service means that when a counsellor joins the conversation, they have context from the start.

"We support a high number of people through those web and SMS based interactions, so we know from speaking to people that they are ready and comfortable to deal with an agentic support as well, knowing that they will speak to one of our people at the end of that process,” says Campbell.

She tells eHealthNews that Whakarongorau developed the service with clinical oversight and input from frontline staff and tested it with staff, trusted mental health service partners and people with lived experience.

She says success for the Welcome service is about connection and care rather than efficiency metrics. 

"For us it is about connection, it is experience and it is getting people that pathway to wellbeing that they need and deserve," Campbell said.

The Welcome service is part of Whakarongorau's broader digital transformation, including migration to Microsoft's New Zealand datacentre region. This move saves the organisation $10,000 monthly in IT fees whilst enabling AI innovation and improved service delivery.

Image: Whakarongorau chief support services officer Anna Campbell

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Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora has released a Request for Proposal to establish an open panel of suppliers for AI ambient scribe solutions to improve clinical productivity and experience.

The initiative aims to reduce administrative burden by providing clinicians with access to tools that generate accurate structured clinical documentation, allowing them to spend more time on direct patient care.

New Zealand already has the Heidi Health AI-powered scribe deployed in every emergency department nationwide, with 1,250 clinicians currently using the technology and another 1,000 licences being added to support mental health teams.

Health Minister Simeon Brown said in March 2026 that, "this places New Zealand among the fastest health systems in the world to move from pilot to nationwide frontline AI use in emergency departments, helping clinicians spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork”.

The procurement will create a pre-qualified panel of suppliers that meet defined clinical, technical, privacy and assurance requirements.

"The panel will provide access to AI-enabled tools that support clinicians to generate accurate, structured clinical documentation from patient-clinician interactions, while maintaining appropriate clinician oversight and clinical safety controls," the RFP states.

The open panel approach will provide flexibility and choice to Health NZ districts and services by enabling access to multiple qualified suppliers, the documents say.

All production data, including patient health information processed or generated by the solution, must be hosted in data centres physically located in New Zealand or Australia and solutions must comply with the Privacy Act 2020 and the Health Information Privacy Code 2020.

"Clinical safety, patient trust, and responsible use of AI are fundamental," the documents say. 

"Solutions must demonstrate mature governance, transparency, and safeguards to protect patient information and support safe clinical practice."

Responses should be in by 7 May and the expected contract start date is July 2026.

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Eight Primary Health Organisations (PHOs) from across the country have launched a joint procurement process to identify a shared, AI-capable technology platform for primary health operations. 

WellSouth Primary Health Network, Tū Ora Compass Health, THINK Hauora, Health Hawke's Bay, ProCare Health Ltd, Pinnacle Midlands Health Network, RAPHS Primary Health Support, and Nelson Bays Primary Health together support the delivery of primary healthcare to communities from Northland to Southland.

The procurement covers four interconnected functional domains that the organisations say form the operational backbone of PHO activity: claims and payments, provider portal, case management, and referrals.

Damon Campbell, chief operating officer at WellSouth Primary Health Network, says the PHOs face similar challenges and there is a lot of opportunity to do things more efficiently and effectively. The collaborative approach provides the scale to make it attractive to a range of industry partners.

"We are not procuring a single tool to fix a single problem, we are looking for a platform that can transform how eight PHOs operate across four critical domains, with AI and automation at the centre of that transformation."

Artificial intelligence features as a central theme across all four domains and the PHOs say that the procurement focuses on workforce support rather than replacement. 

Matthew Lord, chief information officer at Tū Ora Compass Health, says their teams spend enormous amounts of time on administrative processes that technology should be handling.

"This procurement is about reclaiming that capacity, not by reducing our workforce, but by giving them better tools so they can focus on the work that actually makes a difference to people's health,” he says.

The claims and payments domain involves end-to-end management of health service claims, payment processing, reconciliation, and financial reporting. 

The provider portal covers the interface through which contracted general practices and allied health providers interact with PHO systems, including enrolment, service reporting, document submission, and communication. 

Case management involves tracking and coordination of health improvement programmes, care plans, and complex patient journeys across primary and community settings and the PHOs are interested in AI-assisted prioritisation, intelligent workflow support, and automation of routine documentation.

The referrals domain covers management of referral pathways between primary, community, and secondary services, including initiating, tracking, and closing referrals, with automation and integration with national systems as central requirements.

Janice McDougall, general manager – strategy and enablement at THINK Hauora, says any platform must support culturally responsive ways of working and enable the PHOs to see and respond to inequity in their data.

"We were clear from the outset that Te Tiriti o Waitangi principles are not an afterthought, they are a requirement, and the collective approach gives us the weight to make that expectation stick,” she says.

Garry Johnston, general manager digital and innovation at Pinnacle Midlands Health Network, says he is excited to understand how the market may be able to better support delivering at scale, whilst allowing for the unique and diverse needs of the PHO’s communities to be met.

The eight PHOs collectively cover a substantial portion of the New Zealand population and operate across urban, provincial, and rural settings. Each organisation administers primary health funding, supports general practice teams, and delivers health improvement and equity programmes within its region.

Peter Goodwin, strategic projects team lead at Rotorua Area Primary Health Services, says that for a smaller PHOs like his, the ability to participate in a procurement of this scale is a genuine opportunity. 

"We carry the same operational complexity as the larger organisations, but with a smaller team to manage it,” he says.

Campbell says that while each of the PHOs involved are at different stages, having a collective mindset is the best approach to the AI and automation space. 

"The fact that eight organisations have chosen to do this together, rather than separately, is itself a statement about where primary health is heading," he says.

Vendors should contact PHO-Procurement@wellsouth.org.nz for more information. 

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Health NZ is threatening health workers with disciplinary action for using AI tools like ChatGPT to write notes. But the PSA says the real question is why staff are turning to free tools in the first place.

A Health NZ senior manager has sent a memo to all Mental Health and Addiction Services staff in the Rotorua Lakes district, telling them they will face disciplinary action if they use free tools like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to write clinical notes on patients.

"Health workers are turning to AI tools because they are under enormous pressure and looking for ways to manage their workloads," said Fleur Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.

"A memo that opens by threatening formal disciplinary action is not a training programme. It’s a warning shot that will make staff afraid to ask questions or seek help."

The PSA does not dispute that the use of AI in health settings must be carefully regulated. Patient privacy and data security are serious obligations. But proper regulation requires training, approved tools, and a culture where concerns can be raised without livelihoods being threatened.

"Health NZ needs to invest in proper training and approved tools, not threaten workers with Code of Conduct breaches," said Fitzsimons.

"Let’s not forget that the Government has forced Health NZ to cut the very teams responsible for digital systems and IT support, cuts that have impacted every hospital in New Zealand. If staff are improvising with free tools, Health NZ needs to examine why that is the case."

Threatening disciplinary action will not lead to honest conversations about AI use. It will simply drive the practice underground.

"The stakes are high for patients, for staff, and for the health system. The answer is clear guidance, proper resourcing, and supported professional development. Not threats."

Source: PSA media release

Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release.

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Whaikaha is using its own workforce as a real-world testing ground for accessible implementation of artificial intelligence (AI), with around half of staff identifying as disabled.

The Ministry of Disabled People’s approach involves testing AI tools with employees in their everyday work environments. Deputy chief executive strategy and enablement Ginny Baddeley says this internal testing provides insights into both barriers and benefits.

"We felt that to be able to have that conversation about AI from a disability perspective, we had to have our own test case and 50 percent of our staff are disabled or identify as having a disability,” she explains.

This real-world testing approach provides valuable data on how AI tools perform across different accessibility needs and work styles, enabling Whaikaha to provide evidence-based guidance about accessible AI implementation.

Whaikaha is mainly using Microsoft Copilot, but Baddeley says the specific technology matters less than whether it genuinely helps people work more effectively. 

Staff involvement from the early stages has kept use cases practical and focused on solving real problems rather than implementing technology for its own sake.

Baddeley says Whaikaha treats AI implementation as a behavioural change initiative rather than a technical project and says the main challenges are about confidence and judgement rather than technical skills.

"We consistently talked about AI as supporting thinking rather than replacing it, and reinforced that people remain accountable for decisions and outputs," she says. 

"As leaders, we set the tone by visibly using AI in our own work and talking openly about how and where we use it, and where we do not."

She says this leadership approach has helped normalise appropriate AI use and build confidence among staff members leading to steady uptake, particularly in writing, analysis and briefing roles.

“Our focus is on common tasks that take time but do not require unique judgement every time, such as drafting, summarising, and navigating internal guidance,” Baddeley says. 

“Reducing friction in these areas frees people to focus on work that benefits most from human insight, while improving consistency and accessibility.

“AI can assist, but people remain responsible. Building capability alongside clear guardrails has been more effective for us than relying on rules alone,” she explains.

Baddeley and Whaikaha chief executive Paula Tesoriero will share their learnings on building accessible responsible AI at an upcoming HiNZ event on March 31 in Auckland.

Register for – From IT to Digital and AI in Health – today.

Image: Deputy chief executive strategy and enablement Ginny Baddeley

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An AI-powered scribe is live in every Emergency Department (ED) nationwide with 1250 clinicians using it and another 1000 licenses being added to support mental health teams.

Health Minister Simeon Brown announced in October that the scribe would be rolled out to 1,000 doctors and frontline staff working in EDs across New Zealand.

That number of users was extended to 1250 and Health New Zealand is now progressing approval of more than 1000 additional licences, predominantly for use by mental health teams.

The Minister says, “this places New Zealand among the fastest health systems in the world to move from pilot to nationwide frontline AI use in emergency departments, helping clinicians spend more time with patients and less time on paperwork.”

A pilot at Hawke's Bay ED last year involved 10 clinicians across two months using the Heidi AI scribe and showed significant productivity gains alongside improvements in staff wellbeing. 

Results showed doctors using the AI tool were able to see, on average, one additional patient per shift as a result of time saved on documentation.

Chief medical officer at Hawke’s Bay Benjamin Pearson and ED clinical director Simon Harger presented on the pilot at Digital Health Week NZ in November 26, 2025. 

Its use there as expanded to the entire ED including all senior medical officers, resident medical officers, nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, plus medical registrars.

Pearson said staff have reported a reduction in burnout in both ED and outpatient settings from an average of six out of 10 before the tool was introduced, down to three out of 10 and it has been particularly beneficial for nursing staff who previously hand wrote their notes.

The national roll-out was delivered by HealthX – a programme of monthly delivery of digital solutions focused on addressing the five health targets plus mental health pressures and led by director of digital innovation and AI, Sonny Taite.

Brown says that after one month of use at Middlemore Emergency Department, 80 per cent of surveyed staff said the AI scribe improved productivity or efficiency, and 84 per cent said it had a positive impact on their overall experience and wellbeing during a shift.

Brown says AI will never replace the skills of doctors, but has a role to play in supporting them so they can focus on putting patients first. 

“We will continue investing in digital technology that puts patients at the centre of the healthcare system, improving access to care, and delivering better health outcomes for New Zealanders,” he says.

Image: Health Minister Simeon Brown

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Christchurch company Streamliners has partnered with Heidi Health to integrate AI-powered assistance with localised clinical guidance.

The partnership will link Heidi Health's AI-powered clinician assistance with HealthPathways localised clinical guidance across Streamliners' global network of more than 50 health systems.

"Clinicians use both HealthPathways and Heidi extensively in their daily practice, from GP clinics to hospital wards, and in allied health settings," says Mike Weiss, Streamliners CEO.

"We are excited to be partnering with Heidi Health as a global leader in AI integration. Linking the clinical evidence-based benefits of HealthPathways with the Heidi user experience is a natural fit for us."

Where local HealthPathways guidance is available, clinicians using Heidi will be able to access an assistive, clinician-led documentation and workflow experience. 

Kieran Holland, Streamliners clinical director of research, says the partnership will help accelerate evidence and policy into clinical practice.

"AI scribes and evidence products are rapidly becoming part of routine clinical workflows, and clinicians want those tools to reflect local pathways and agreed models of care," he says.

"Safely and securely integrating HealthPathways with AI with appropriate safeguards will ensure patients get the best local care, save time for clinicians, and deliver system level benefits through improved patient flow."

The partnership announcement coincides with Heidi Health's launch of a new platform called 'Evidence'.

The company says this provides point-of-care medical evidence with citations designed to support clinical reasoning in real world settings and is one of the only global evidence tools that is ad-free.

Heidi’s AI-powered scribe is currently being rolled out across New Zealand's Emergency Departments (EDs).

Health New Zealand director of digital innovation and AI Sonny Taite says the organisation is pleased with the positive feedback provided by clinicians involved in the early use of the AI scribe.

“Clinicians have consistently reported that the use of the AI scribe reduces the time and cognitive load associated with clinical documentation, allowing them to focus more on patient care,” he says.  

“Early qualitative feedback from senior medical officers indicates this has helped ease documentation pressure during busy shifts, and there has been no reported resistance from patients to its use in emergency settings.” 

Taite says Health NZ is continuing with the rollout of Heidi across the country’s EDs and he expects to provide a further update towards the end of the month.

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MoleMap's artificial intelligence (AI) software Kahu is processing around 50,000 dermoscopic images per month across New Zealand, with patient acceptance reaching 94 percent over the past year.

Speaking at Digital Health Week in November 2025, chief information officer MoleMap Australia and New Zealand Johan Vendrig said about a quarter of those images are being forwarded to dermatologists for diagnosis.

The AI tool has been operating across New Zealand clinics since January 2024, acting as decision support for melanographers to help them determine which lesions need specialist review.

"The AI is not giving any diagnosis, it is purely decision support used by the nurse to decide ‘should I image this lesion and send it to the dermatologist or should I not do that?’," he explained.

The system gives five possible outcomes for each lesion: malignant, premalignant, actinic keratosis, likely benign, and no result or poor image, to help in consistent decision-making.

Clinical Lead at MoleMap Australia and New Zealand, Lara Wild, said patient acceptance of AI-assisted skin checks has been strong, with only six percent expressing concern about the involvement of artificial intelligence.

“Patients value that a melanographer is conducting their skin examination, and they appreciate that AI supports clinical decision-making by providing an additional layer of reassurance,” Wild said. 

She also highlighted the critical shortage of dermatologists in New Zealand.

“We have a limited number of dermatologists, and it takes a minimum of 12 years to train one. The question is whether we can realistically train enough specialists to manage every skin cancer diagnosed across New Zealand and Australia,” she said.

Wild explained that Kahu also functions as a training and quality assurance tool. It enables supervisors to audit not only which lesions melanographers refer to dermatologists, but also those they decide not to refer.

“While we have always been able to assess how melanographers perform in clinic, we have not previously had visibility over the lesions that were not selected for further review,” she said, adding that routine auditing remains essential to ensure balanced clinical judgement. 

“We have considered that some melanographers may become overly reliant on AI, so it is important that these audits form part of our standard assessment and quality assurance processes.”

Vendrig told the conference that the system continues to be refined using images collected from MoleMap’s clinic network across Australia and New Zealand.

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Heidi, the leading healthcare AI platform, today announced major milestones in its mission to redefine how healthcare is delivered: the launch of Heidi Evidence and the acquisition of UK-based clinical AI pioneer Automedica. This comes alongside the launch of Heidi Comms, an AI partner for healthcare teams to coordinate patient communications across calls, bookings, reminders and follow-ups.

These moves mark Heidi’s evolution from an AI scribe into a comprehensive AI Care Partner, bridging the gap between clinical documentation and real-time clinical reasoning. Clinical evidence  underpins everyday decisions in patient care, from confirming diagnoses and selecting treatments to determining dosages, follow-up plans, and safety considerations.

"We believe that for AI to be a true care partner, the integrity of its evidence must be non-negotiable," said Dr. Thomas Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Heidi.  "As we see more general-purpose AI platforms like OpenAI move toward ad-supported models, consumers are rightly concerned about hidden influence.

In a healthcare setting, that concern becomes paramount. Bringing transparent, clinical-grade insights into the room makes it easier to deliver quality care, but that information must be free from the ambiguity of commercial influence. By committing to Evidence being ad-free and independent, we ensure clinicians can stay present with their patients, knowing their decision-making is built on pure clinical rigor, not a business model."

Heidi Evidence: Bridging the "Knowledge Gap" at the Point of Care

Medical knowledge now doubles every 73 days, making it impossible for clinicians to stay updated with new methods and research. While many have turned to general-purpose AI, these tools lack transparency and local clinical context. This "search engine" approach often erodes the perceived authority of the encounter, leading to a profound lack of patient comfort when they feel their symptoms are being researched via the same tools they use at home.

Heidi Evidence solves this by providing a clinical-grade research tool integrated directly into the Heidi platform. Key features include:

• Authoritative Sourcing: Built in partnership with EMGuidance and NICE Guidelines, amongst others, to ensure guidance reflects regional standards and formularies.
• Ad-Free Integrity: A permanent commitment to non-commercial, auditable data, ensuring clinical decisions are never influenced by advertising.
• Seamless Integration: Available as a standalone tool or alongside Heidi’s AI Scribe, which has already supported over 100 million clinical interactions globally.
• Traceable Intelligence: Provides concise summaries with transparent citations and verbatim excerpts, allowing clinicians to verify every insight.
• Ethical Accessibility: Heidi Evidence is free for individual clinicians, ensuring high-quality medical knowledge isn’t a privilege of wealth. While consumer AI monetizes via ads and data, Heidi uses enterprise revenue to subsidize access for practitioners in resource-constrained or fragmented markets. This provides a professional, bias-freealternative to ad-supported search engines that prioritize profit over clinical accuracy.
  

Strategic Acquisition of Automedica

Automedica's evidence-led AI framework and strong relationship with UK national regulators will underpin Heidi's Evidence capabilities. The strategic acquisition accelerates Heidi's technical and regulatory capabilities and access to the MHRA AI Airlock, a prestigious regulatory sandbox for healthcare AI. This will extend Heidi's footprint in the UK, reinforcing its commitment to being a regulator-aligned partner for global health systems.

A New Standard for Healthcare AI

Heidi Evidence is in part built on Claude, Anthropic’s AI models, to deliver real-time clinical insights at the point of care. Claude’s strength in interpreting complex, unstructured clinical conversations, synthesizing dense medical literature, and generating accurate, grounded outputs makes it particularly well suited to high-stakes healthcare environments, where precision and reliability are critical. This reflects the evidence-based, safety-first approach that underpins both Anthropic’s model development philosophy and Heidi’s market position.

This alignment on clinical integrity is what distinguishes Heidi’s market position from the "growth-at-any-cost" models prevalent in consumer AI.

“Heidi is tackling one of the hardest problems in healthcare AI: how to scale capability without compromising trust,” said Michael Tolo, General Partner at Blackbird. “By treating evidence as core infrastructure, not content monetised through ads or influence, Heidi is building the kind of defensible, globally relevant platform healthcare systems are demanding.”

Source: Heidi media release

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Kiwi GPs can now benefit from an artificial intelligence tool providing context-aware patient summaries and automated clinical documentation fully integrated with Medtech Evolution. 

Medtech Global has launched Medtech AI in New Zealand, a comprehensive AI platform that integrates directly with its Medtech Evolution practice management software (PMS). 

Unlike standalone transcription tools that treat each consultation as an isolated episode, Medtech AI synthesises a patient's medical history from the PMS to provide clinicians with a complete view before, during and after consultations, addressing the issue of ‘information overload’ in healthcare settings. 

Keeping clinicians in control 

GP Tim Ross says, “paperwork is frustrating for most clinicians, spending too much time on documentation, too much time searching for information and not enough time just face to face engaging with the patient.  

“This functionality puts the information you need in front of you while you can get on with consulting.” 

The new platform generates structured consultation notes, referral letters, and clinical correspondence. 

Chrissie Patterson, Medtech general manager product, says Medtech AI keeps clinicians in control by supporting clinical judgment rather than replacing it.  

“We wanted to enhance efficiency and care quality by using AI to intelligently surface the relevant information at the right time, streamline documentation, and support clinical workflows in real time,” she says. 

“Every output is reviewed and approved by the clinician to ensure accuracy, accountability, and trust.” 

Patterson says reduced documentation time is estimated to save between six to eight minutes per consultation, helping to prevent clinician burnout. 

A complete patient view 

Lawrence Peterson, Medtech general manager integration and infrastructure, says, "direct integration into the patient record ensures that data is not extracted from the PMS or stored elsewhere, but is processed in line at the time of consultation with patient consent.  

“Updates are then recorded directly back into the PMS. Nothing sensitive is stored externally, and all consultation data, including the patient details, consultation summary, and transcription is deleted from the partner product at the conclusion of the consultation." 

The integration with Medtech Evolution allows the platform to provide a central dashboard displaying a patient’s recent consultation notes, current medications, conditions, allergies, immunisations, and screenings.  

For patients with extensive medical histories, the system synthesises information within around 20 seconds, presenting top-level summaries while maintaining access to detailed records. 

“It works on both web browsers and mobile applications, allowing clinicians to conduct consultations away from their computers while maintaining full integration with the Medtech Evolution PMS,” says Peterson. 

“A time-poor clinician does not want to be reading through 20 pages of notes to get a snapshot of what has happened with this patient.” 

Clinicians review and approve all AI-generated content before it writes back to the PMS and the platform includes custom prompts and templates organised by medical specialty. 

Better patient understanding 

Medtech AI provides patient insights including health literacy levels, sentiment analysis, and emotional engagement during consultations.  

“It turns clinical conversations into structured information, actionable insights, and even patient sentiment is being recorded and captured so you understand how much your patient may have understood their interaction with you today,” Patterson explains. 

These metrics help determine how consultation summaries should be written for individual patients, with the system automatically adjusting the language it uses based on assessed health literacy. 

“We know patients do not always remember what they are told in a consult due to a variety of reasons, including being sick, health anxiety, lack of health literacy, or that they are not good auditory learners,” she says. 

The system can send health literacy-adjusted consultation summaries to patients via email, including calendar links for follow-up appointments and access to New Zealand health resources through Healthify sites. 

Evolving and innovating 

Medtech Global chief executive Jeremy van de Klundert says the company has taken a measured approach to AI integration, prioritising data security and clinical accuracy by embedding AI capabilities directly into the Medtech Evolution PMS. 

He emphasises that Medtech AI supports rather than replaces clinical judgement. 

The rapidly evolving AI landscape is both challenging and promising.  

“It is an incredibly fast-changing world and we believe 2026 will see huge advancements in this area.” 

Medtech Global will host a live webinar on 5 March 2026 at 1 pm, showcasing a real-time demonstration of Medtech AI and its capabilities – Register here

If you have any questions re the above feature article, please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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Alcidion today announces that Miya Precision Concept Detection has been included on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG – #522634) as a Class 1 Medical Device. The capability has also been successfully registered as a Class 1 Medical Device with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the United Kingdom.

Concept Detection is an AI-assisted feature within the Miya Noting module of Alcidion’s Miya Precision platform. It analyses clinicians’ free-text notes to identify medical concepts and suggest associated SNOMED CT codes (coding system for standardising medical terminology), supporting structured clinical documentation, workflow efficiency and improved data quality. 

The software is designed to support clinical decision-making by reducing cognitive load and enhancing documentation workflows, helping busy clinicians spend less time manually searching for and selecting clinical concepts. Importantly, all detected concepts require clinician oversight and validation before being added to the patient's record.

As healthcare systems increasingly look to technology to ease the pressures on their workforce, demonstrating that these tools meet regulatory standards is essential. Registration as a medical device in both Australia and the United Kingdom provides healthcare organisations with assurance that Miya Precision Concept Detection has been developed and assessed in line with the safety, quality and performance requirements expected of software used in clinical settings.

This milestone advances Alcidion’s AI strategy and strengthens its offering to health systems across multiple markets. With healthcare providers in both regions increasingly mandating SaMD certification for AI enabled tools, Alcidion is now positioned to offer Concept Detection to its existing Miya Precision customers as well as to new health systems seeking compliant, clinician-supportive AI Capabilities.

To support the Concept Detection and future AI-enabled capabilities, Alcidion has developed a proprietary Miya AI Service module that provides a secure and controlled architecture for deploying AI functionality within healthcare environments. The Miya AI Service is specifically designed to enable accelerated adoption of AI functionality supporting Miya Precision customers to take advantage of the latest developments in AI for Healthcare.

Alcidion Managing Director and CEO Kate Quirke said:

“Achieving regulatory registration in both Australia and the United Kingdom is an important milestone that clears the path for commercial deployment of our AI assisted clinical documentation capabilities across our two largest markets. Healthcare organisations increasingly require certified medical software before adoption, and this registration allows us to deliver this capability across our existing customer base and to new customers in regulated environments.

With this foundation in place, we can now extend these capabilities across our existing Miya Precision customers and to new health systems seeking dependable, AI enabled workflows.”

Source: Alcidion media release

Sector updates are provided by organisations to eHealthNews.nz and have not necessarily been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the organisation issuing the release.

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