Alcidion (ASX: ALC) is taking on one of the most persistent challenges in healthcare technology, ageing patient administration systems (PAS), with a new PAS designed to change how administrative teams work and accelerate access to care. Built from the ground up on the Miya platform, it takes advantage of the platform’s intuitive user interface, real-time integration capabilities and strong foundation for AI to transform healthcare administration. 

The launch makes Alcidion one of the few suppliers able to offer a new PAS built on a modern platform architecture and natively integrated with clinical workflows. The decision to release a new PAS now reflects the shift in what current technology makes possible. Advances in AI-assisted development allow Alcidion to draw on 30 years of patient administration knowledge held in our existing PAS known as PCS, and bring that depth into completely new modules of Miya far faster than a new build of this scale would once have allowed.

Miya Patient Administration is designed to close the gaps between administrative and clinical work. Each record shows where the patient is in their journey and who is responsible for the next step, so nothing falls between teams. Staff start each day with their priorities in front of them, set by the hospital’s own rules and supported by AI.

Alcidion Group Managing Director and CEO Kate Quirke said:

“Hospitals have invested heavily in clinical systems, while the teams managing referrals, waiting lists and bookings have been left working with tools built for another era. Miya Patient Administration gives them an intuitive system that captures information once, reduces manual effort and connects their work seamlessly with the clinical teams they support.”

The system is designed to shorten the time from referral to booking, keep waiting lists validated and prioritised as they change, give earlier sight of bed and theatre capacity and reduce duplicate data entry. New staff will be able to learn as they work because each new task brings forward the information needed, intuitively, seamlessly. The platform architecture lowers the cost and complexity of integrating with other hospital systems and reduces reliance on workarounds that cannot scale as demand grows.

The new PAS joins Alcidion’s solutions for patient flow, emergency care and virtual care on the Miya platform, used in hospitals across Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The platform integrates in real time with other hospital systems and is built on FHIR, the international standard for sharing health information. Hospitals can start with the PAS and add other Miya solutions over time or add it to an existing Miya deployment.

Health services can request a demonstration at alcidion.com or by emailing info@alcidion.com.

Source: Alcidion media release

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If you have spent time in an emergency department, you will know there is rarely a quiet moment. 

Priorities can change in an instant, and access to timely and reliable information is critical. 

Working in digital health, we often face the same question: how do you introduce change into an environment that never stops moving? 

The importance of partnership
Over the past year, we have been working with staff at Wellington Regional Hospital's Emergency Department (ED) to support a programme of digital improvements while helping prepare for a wider redevelopment that will eventually create a larger emergency department. 

The answer, we have learned, is partnership. Throughout the programme, we have worked alongside clinicians, nurses, administrators, operational leaders and other frontline staff to understand how the department functions, where frustrations exist and which changes would make the biggest difference. 

We bring technical expertise, but the people who work in ED every day understand the realities of emergency care and that collaboration has shaped every stage of the work. 

Front of Whare
Our contribution forms part of the wider Front of Whare programme, which is preparing the hospital for a larger emergency department in the years ahead. Unlike many redevelopment projects, services are being relocated in stages across the campus while clinical areas are refurbished and repurposed. 

As those moves occur, Digital Services has a critical role to play as before staff can move into a new space, the digital foundations need to be ready. That includes network infrastructure, Wi-Fi, telephony and connectivity, ensuring clinicians and support staff can continue working without interruption. 

At the same time, we have been improving the systems staff use every day inside Wellington ED. 

One of the biggest opportunities has been helping existing systems work together more effectively. Before the first phase of our work, staff often needed to move between multiple applications to find patient information, track progress through the department, or check whether blood test results, radiology images and reports were available. 

We have since connected key systems that previously operated independently and introduced new patient-tracking capabilities that provide a clearer view of what's happening across the department. 

Patient tracking
One of the most popular changes has been a new patient-tracking view that allows staff to see more information in one place and reprioritise patients as circumstances change. 

Another improvement surfaces notification flags and status indicators directly within patient-tracking views, allowing staff to see when radiology images and reports become available without repeatedly checking separate systems. 

From a technology perspective, these are relatively modest changes. In a busy emergency department, however, they remove unnecessary steps, improve visibility and help staff focus on patient care. 

The feedback from ED staff has been encouraging. What began as a series of technical improvements is already helping people work differently and creating opportunities for further change. The next phase will support a triage-first model, making important patient information available earlier in a patient's journey and reducing reliance on paper-based processes. 

Implementing change in a busy ED
Introducing those changes safely has required careful planning. 

An ED is not an environment where technology can simply be switched off while upgrades happen. Every change must be tested and implemented around clinical operations. 

Earlier this year, we completed a planned three-hour outage to introduce the first stage of the integration work, the longest digital outage the department had experienced. 

During that period, ED staff reverted to manual processes while continuing to care for patients. It required close coordination between clinical, operational and digital teams and reinforced the importance of preparation, communication and trust. 

The experience also highlighted the value of the wider Health NZ digital workforce. Architects, database administrators, testers, engineers and other technical specialists worked behind the scenes to ensure systems were configured correctly, thoroughly tested and safe to deploy. Their professionalism and commitment played a critical role in the success of the implementation. 

Building trust
As with any complex change programme, there were challenges along the way. Some had the potential to become significant obstacles during go-live. What helped us navigate those moments was the trust we built across clinical, operational and technical teams, supported by open communication and a shared commitment to finding solutions. 

One of the things we gained a greater appreciation for was the role operational leaders and frontline staff play in making change possible. Digital projects are often judged by what happens on go-live day, but their success is usually determined by the relationships built long before that. 

Those relationships do not end when the technology is switched on. Following the successful implementation, our team hosted a morning tea to thank ED staff for their patience, flexibility and support throughout the project. It was a small gesture, but an important acknowledgement that the work had been a shared effort. 

While these lessons were learned in a 24/7 emergency department, they will be familiar to many people working across healthcare. Whether supporting an emergency department, hospital ward, operating theatre or outpatient service, digital change is most successful when it is designed with the people who use it every day. 

Meaningful digital change happens when people trust one another, communicate openly and work towards a shared goal. Whether they are delivering care, supporting operations or enabling technology, successful outcomes are built on collaboration. 

Image: from left to right – Jan du Toit, Senior Project Manager; Lisa Bottin, Team Leader – ED; Lincoln Earley, Specialty Clinical Nurse Technician; Yasaswani Bandi, Senior Solution Architect; and Corey Beavis, Senior Business Analyst.

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Heidi, the AI Care Partner for leading clinicians and health systems globally, today unveiled Heidi II, a new version of its platform that acts on the administrative work surrounding every patient visit rather than documenting the visit alone.

Heidi currently supports 2.8 million patient visits every week globally, surfacing around 10 million follow-up tasks. Until now, those tasks were handed back to the clinician. With Heidi II, these tasks can be acted on with the introduction of several new capabilities: Agents, Memory, and Agentic Search - of peer-reviewed medical journals articles.

Administrative work is consuming an increasing share of clinical time across health systems globally. The average doctor spends 8.7 hours a week, or 16.6% of working hours, on administration, with tasks scattered across the four to six systems typically used during a patient visit. The work that surrounds care is increasingly competing with care provision itself.

Heidi was built to alleviate that burden. Its Scribe has supported more than 175 million visits and 67 million clinical hours globally, while Heidi Evidence has answered more than 10 million queries since launch. Since February 2024, Heidi has surfaced more than 400 million follow-on tasks. Heidi II is designed to take the next step: acting on that work rather than simply identifying it.

“This is the culmination of our work at Heidi,” said Thomas Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO of Heidi. “We started inside the visit by capturing the note and gathering the care context. Now Heidi can create the tasks and complete them from referrals and chart prep to arranging follow ups. It handles that work as a partner, while clinical judgement and approvals remain with the clinician.”

Heidi II starts where a clinician would
With the new Home, Heidi opens on a clinician’s day, bringing patients, sessions and tasks together with the relevant context already loaded. Clinicians can attach sessions, patients and sources as references, or upload external files to provide additional context.

From there, clinicians can ask Heidi to complete a task in plain language. Heidi spins up an agent that plans, and executes the work, then returns the result for review without needing to be re-prompted at every step. Early use cases include pre-charting a full day’s patients, performing evidence based analyses on a practice’s visits or referral communications, and running panel sweeps to identify patients due for immunisations, blood tests, screening or recalls.

“Heidi does the preparation I used to squeeze in between patients,” said Raymond Brown, MD, Capital ENT & Sinus Center. “It loads my schedule, finds the pathology results in the chart, and writes a pre-visit note I can read in thirty seconds.”

Agents can be saved and scheduled as Routines, either for an individual clinician or an entire practice, and run across a patient list rather than one patient at a time. 

Heidi II can also use the computer like a member of the care team, acting across the systems a practice runs on: the record, the calendar, the inbox, the portal, even systems you never thought possible. When Heidi cannot complete a task, it says so and explains why. 

Clinical judgement stays with the clinician
Agents in healthcare need supervision and should be met with friction. In Heidi II, every agentic run is designed around that principle. Clinical judgement remains with the clinician, with approval controls applied according to the workflow and settings configured by the clinician or organisation. Heidi II’s capabilities are staged by region and setting, with dedicated internal clinical safety teams reviewing features through a clinical risk lens before and after release. 

Heidi becomes the connective tissue across clinical tools
Heidi II is designed to work across the systems clinicians already use. Agentic search using full-text journal articles from the likes of the New England Journal of Medicine, Wiley, Cochrane and more, alongside BMJ Group’s clinical decision support information, will bring the evidence base directly into every chat, with citations that journal subscribers can follow to access the full article. New connectors allow Heidi to work with existing practice systems, from pulling appointment lists and answering questions from the EHR, to reading and writing appointments and clinical mail, or following a practice’s documented process from an SOP.

Heidi’s ambition is to double the world’s capacity for care, and Heidi II is the next chapter. For practices, that means less time spent on low value work. For patients, it means clinicians can deliver more complete care that is timely and high quality. This isn’t built simply for clinicians who want to go home earlier. It is built for clinicians who want to work at the frontier of care, with Heidi bringing more clinical context to every decision.

Heidi II begins rolling out on September 29 in English, followed by additional languages. These product capabilities will not be available in the UK or EU. Clinicians and care teams can find out more at heidihealth.com.

Source: Heidi media release

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HealthLink, in partnership with NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA), is introducing a digital version of the Medical certificate for driver licence (DL9) form.

The DL9 form is used by health professionals to assess a patient’s medical fitness to drive and is currently completed on paper. The new digital DL9, available within HealthLink, will modernise this process and improve the experience for health professionals, drivers, and NZTA.

Why this change matters

Each year, more than 160,000 DL9 medical certificates are completed by GPs and other health professionals across New Zealand. Moving the DL9 online will:

• Reduce administrative burden in practices
• Improve data quality and completeness
• Enable faster, more secure transmission to NZTA
• Support timely decision-making around medical fitness to drive

“Moving the DL9 medical certificate online is an important step in modernising the driver licensing process. We’re making it easier for health professionals to submit complete, accurate information securely, while also improving the experience for drivers and supporting timely licensing decisions.”
– Chris Rodley, Head of Driving Regulation, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi

What’s changing

With the digital DL9:

• Health professionals complete and submit the form directly from HealthLink
• Mandatory fields help reduce incomplete applications
• Embedded guidance links support clinical assessments
• Most drivers will no longer need to transport DL9 paper forms to licensing agents

There is nothing drivers will need to worry about with the change to the online system, the process is completed by health professionals and NZTA.

Built for health professionals

The online DL9 has been designed to fit into existing practice workflows:

• Familiar HealthLink interface – launched within the GP PMS
• Auto-population of patient details
• Easier access to form history
• Reduced time spent on administration

Ahead of the wider rollout, the digital DL9 was piloted for 5 weeks with 4 GPs and 1 workplace health provider, located in various areas of the country to test the form in real-world practice settings Feedback from participating GPs has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly regarding the time saved in completing the form, as it is easier to complete and provides direct access to relevant guidance.

The strong response has continued beyond the pilot. GPs who have spoken with the NZTA team have expressed enthusiasm about the move to a digital process, while the HealthLink team also received significant positive feedback from health professionals at the Rotorua GPCME 2026 Conference. Many GPs are looking forward to the digital DL9 becoming available more widely.

‘Having the opportunity to trial the online DL9 prior to official rollout has been an exciting experience for our busy practice. We have a team of 7 GPs, 5 nurses and 4 admin staff who have all benefitted from it. The reduction in paper-based administration for the whole team has been a real highlight, along with the ability to attach documents directly from the PMS or desktop, having the form save directly to the patient file and the added security that a form won't be misplaced. Navigating the HealthLink form has been simple and straightforward, and we love it’.
- Queens Park General Practice Ltd, Invercargill

A collaborative step forward

This initiative is part of a broader effort by HealthLink and NZTA to modernise healthrelated licensing processes and strengthen road safety outcomes through smarter, secure digital solutions.

“The digital DL9 has been designed with health professionals in mind. By embedding the form into existing HealthLink workflows, we’re reducing administrative effort while maintaining the clinical integrity of these important assessments. We’re proud to partner with NZTA to deliver a solution that supports both practices and road safety outcomes.”
– David Young, Commercial Director, HealthLink

Further information about the digital DL9, including user guides and FAQs to support practices through the transition, is available on the HealthLink website: https://www.healthlink.co.nz/nzta/

Source: Lanas media release

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New Zealand’s healthcare organisations are managing growing volumes of imaging and multimedia content, increasing demand for enterprise-wide access, and a need to securely share information across care networks.

Health New Zealand is tackling these issues by preparing to go to market for a Radiology Modernisation Programme to replace multiple legacy systems and enable standardised workflows, improved data sharing, and better clinical decision-making.

Mika Joronen, general manager, New Zealand Dedalus ANZ, says lessons can be learned from the Klinikum Dortmund deployment in Germany, demonstrating how a modern enterprise imaging strategy can create a strong foundation for the future.

Connecting care 

Healthcare organisations are managing more clinical content than ever before. Medical imaging, reports, clinical documents, videos and other patient information are often stored across multiple departmental systems, creating complexity for clinicians and IT teams alike. As digital health strategies mature, the ability to bring this information together and make it securely accessible across care settings is becoming an important foundation for connected care.

Dedalus DeepUnity eVNA is designed to support this shift. More than a traditional vendor neutral archive, it provides a platform approach to enterprise content management, helping healthcare providers consolidate DICOM and non-DICOM data, reduce information silos and support secure information exchange across departments and organisations.

At Klinikum Dortmund in Germany, DeepUnity eVNA is helping one of the country’s major healthcare providers establish the foundation for an enterprise imaging strategy that extends beyond traditional PACS archiving.

From archive to enterprise content strategy

Klinikum Dortmund is one of Germany’s major healthcare providers, with more than 1,400 beds and over 5,000 employees working across 25 clinics at two sites. Each year, the organisation manages approximately 65,000 inpatient admissions, alongside significant outpatient activity.

With approximately 368,000 DICOM studies generated annually and around 3.9 million studies identified for migration from the existing PACS environment, Klinikum Dortmund required a future-ready approach to clinical content management. The goal was to consolidate imaging and related clinical documentation, improve access to information and support secure sharing with external physicians and care providers.

The hospital selected DeepUnity eVNA as the foundation for its enterprise imaging strategy. The platform supports the management of both medical imaging and healthcare content within a central archive environment, enabling a more unified approach to information lifecycle management and content access.

A broader view of clinical information

A key focus of the Dortmund project was to move beyond a PACS-centric model and support the sharing of both DICOM and non-DICOM content. This includes imaging studies as well as supporting clinical records, reports and documents from radiology, cardiology and other specialist areas.

Through standards-based interoperability, including DICOM, HL7 and FHIR services, DeepUnity eVNA supports the exchange of healthcare information across systems and workflows. This approach helps create a single access point for supported clinical content, reducing reliance on disconnected archives and supporting better collaboration across the care environment.

“What makes DeepUnity Enterprise VNA (eVNA) particularly compelling is its ability to extend beyond traditional image archiving and support a broader enterprise content strategy. By unifying clinical content, both DICOM and non-DICOM, within a single platform, healthcare organisations can eliminate information silos, enhance access to clinical data, and establish a scalable foundation for future digital health initiatives,” says Lusan Segaram, Business Lead, Diagnostic Imaging IT, Dedalus ANZ

Supporting future digital health initiatives

DeepUnity eVNA provides a scalable, vendor-neutral platform that can help hospitals and health services reduce information silos, support interoperability and create a stronger foundation for enterprise imaging and broader clinical content strategies.

“Healthcare organisations across New Zealand are under increasing pressure to manage growing volumes of clinical information while maintaining accessibility, security and interoperability,” says Mika Joronen, General Manager, New Zealand, Dedalus ANZ 

“Dedalus is best known and trusted here for our patient administration and electronic medication management systems used nationwide: the Klinikum Dortmund deployment demonstrates how our Enterprise VNA can also enable healthcare providers to consolidate information, improve collaboration and support better patient care outcomes.”

An opportunity for ANZ

The Klinikum Dortmund success story highlights how enterprise imaging can become more than a technology project. By bringing clinical content together through a unified archive strategy, healthcare organisations can support more consistent access to patient information, simplify long-term content management and create the digital infrastructure needed for future innovation.

For ANZ healthcare providers, this means an opportunity to rethink how imaging, documents and clinical content are managed across the enterprise. With DeepUnity eVNA, Dedalus supports healthcare organisations in designing a more connected, interoperable and future-ready approach to healthcare data management.

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

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Patients at Timaru Hospital will benefit from faster access to information and better coordinated care following the introduction of a new digital patient documentation platform, Health New Zealand says.

Cortex gives healthcare teams real-time access to patient records, allowing clinicians to securely access and update information at the bedside using mobile devices, and to receive test results and other diagnostic information as soon as they become available.

Clinicians can view a patient's information in one place, providing a more complete picture of their care and supporting faster decision-making. The system also includes digital task management, enabling healthcare teams to assign, track, and update patient care tasks, improving communication and helping ensure important actions are completed promptly.

Health NZ South Canterbury chief nurse Anna Wheeler led the governance team responsible for introducing Cortex to Timaru Hospital and says the project required input and support from multiple teams to ensure its success.

"Moving from paper notes to a modern electronic record system is a significant step forward for patient care in South Canterbury," Wheeler says. 

"It gives clinicians access to the information they need when they need it, helping them provide safer, more coordinated care."

Wheeler says the platform will give teams real-time visibility of clinical records and patient observations, support communication and care planning between hospitals, and improve the quality and availability of clinical documentation.

The platform is already live in Canterbury and the West Coast and the plan is to expand it as a regional system across the South Island, once business cases are approved.

The go-live at Timaru Hospital involved six months of planning and preparation across multiple teams, including the rollout of more than 200 new digital devices, improvements to Wi-Fi capability within the hospital, and training for doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals.

Health New Zealand Digital Services programme director Jon Herries says providing clinicians with a shared view of a patient's care, wherever they are, is particularly valuable for patients receiving care across both Timaru and Christchurch.

He tells eHealthNews the implementation went smoothly and akey part of the preparation involved pre-loading each trained staff member's Cortex account with favourites - the forms they use most often - so clinicians could find what they needed straight away without having to search.

With Cortex now live, Timaru Hospital has inpatient documentation to complement existing tools including MedChart for electronic prescribing, PatientTrack for observations, and the Health Connect South clinical portal.

"Having the right information available at the right time supports better communication between healthcare teams and helps ensure patients receive timely, well-coordinated care throughout their hospital journey," Herries says.

The team can also measure the real-world impact on patient outcomes, with baseline metrics collected on factors such as length of stay at Timaru Hospital prior to go-live, providing a solid basis for monitoring any improvements that can be attributed to the new platform.

Herries adds that lessons learned and resources from the Timaru rollout can be used to support wider implementation, and that larger hospitals will require a staged approach.

Chris Rumball, clinical lead for Cortex at Sense Medical, says it has been a privilege to work alongside the Health NZ and South Canterbury teams to bring Timaru Hospital onto Cortex.

"We are excited for the clinicians, the patients, and the wider health system who will benefit from the teamwork and culture that grows from using a modern, mobile-first tool built for, and with, our New Zealand hospitals, and one that clinicians genuinely look forward to using," Rumball says.

He adds that Sense Medical looks forward to the wider Cortex rollout across the South Island. 

Image: The Cortex rollout team (from left to right): Ros Jackson, Morten Viehoff, Udo Froetschl, Jane Merry, Kate Wilson, Emily Kirk, Julie Turner, Anna Janeic, Rheyden Howe, and Ralph Samson. 

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Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora is preparing to go to market for a Radiology Modernisation Programme valued between $50 million and $100 million. 

The programme will replace multiple legacy systems and enable standardised workflows, improved data sharing, and better clinical decision-making across all regions, a Future Procurement Opportunity notice says.

The notice says the project is awaiting business case approval, but the intent is to go to market in late August or early September 2026.

“This programme is a national digital investment under the Health Digital Investment Plan to enable integrated radiology services across New Zealand by implementing modern systems that support safe, timely, and equitable patient care,” it says. 

The aim of the programme is to; transform fragmented regional services into a single national model; enable radiologists to work at the top of their scope; improve access to diagnostic services regardless of patient location; and support national health targets and improved patient flow across the system.

The procurement will cover the first four of five integrated national capabilities to create a single, connected radiology service, replacing the fragmented systems in use across the country.

The Enterprise Imaging Integration Layer is a national imaging informatics data exchange platform designed to broker data, including HL7 and DICOM formats, between systems using configurable rules, and to normalise data values to support consistent workflows and user experience.

An Integrated Reporting Environment would include the systems that support actual exam reporting workflows, such as a reporting worklist, a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) for imaging exam data review, and a voice-recognition reporting solution.

A National Image Archive would provide long-term imaging data storage and clinical access through a web-based viewer and an Imaging AI Orchestration system would be responsible for brokering data to and from AI-based applications, which may change over time.

A fifth capability - a National Radiology Information System (RIS) - is excluded from this procurement round with a separate procurement for the RIS coming later.

Suppliers can bid for all four capabilities or for selected components within the defined scope.

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Gary Baird has been appointed national director digital services and technology at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.

He will be start on 31 August 2026 and says his focus will be on strengthening the performance and reliability of today’s digital services, while also helping to shape a clear and ambitious long-term direction through the Health Digital Investment Plan.

Baird is currently the technology transformation partner for EY’s government practice. He was previously Inland Revenue’s chief technology officer and deputy commissioner enterprise services and has held senior digital roles at ANZ.

He says he is excited to be joining Health New Zealand at a pivotal time for the sector.

“Digital has a critical role to play in fundamentally reshaping how health services are delivered, improving access, equity, and outcomes for all New Zealanders,” Baird says.

“This is an opportunity to move beyond incremental change and take a more connected, system-wide approach to digital - one that supports clinicians, empowers patients, and enables better decision-making across the health system.”

He tells eHealthNews he is looking forward to working alongside colleagues within Health NZ and across the wider health and digital community to “help unlock the full potential of digital and deliver meaningful, sustainable transformation for Aotearoa.”

Bevan McKenzie, Health NZ chief financial officer, says Baird brings strong experience across both private sector and government in operational delivery and large-scale system change across tax, immigration, social services, transport and infrastructure.

“He will lead Digital Services to further improve operational service performance, while also shaping our longer-term direction through the Health Digital Investment Plan (HDIP),” he says.

McKenzie says Baird’s immediate focus will be on continuing to lift service performance as well as delivering key programmes and projects.

Also, “advancing the HDIP as our long-term roadmap for digital investment and transformation”.

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The Centric suite of clinical tools are being rolled out across North Island hospitals as part of the Health New Zealand’s Accelerate programme to improve patient safety.

The programme is being implemented under the direction of chief executive Dale Bramley and emergency departments are reporting significant improvements in patient safety and clinical decision-making since implementation began.

The Centric Notes, Observations & Snapshot products, developed inhouse at Health NZ Waitematā, are now live at hospitals in the Northern Region and Waikato, Taranaki and Hawera hospitals in Midland.

Implementation into Gisborne Hospital is planned for mid-June, and Tauranga, Whakatane, Rotorua, Taupo, and Thames will follow as soon as infrastructure can be put in place.   Planning for roll-out to hospitals in the Central Region is underway, and planned to start within the next three months.

Stuart Bloomfield, director data & analytics for Planning Funding & Outcomes says the programme aims to complete implementation across Northern Region hospitals by 2026, with Te Manawa Taki and Central regions following by 2027.

Other tools in the Centric suite – including an ED / Inpatient Whiteboard, Shared Goals of Care, Shared Worklists  and Quantum – which delivers structured forms & pathways - are already live across the Northern Region, and are being incrementally implemented across the North Island.

Centric was implemented at Taranaki Base Emergency Department (ED) on 20 April and senior medical officer Timothy Petterson says the digital system provides real-time oversight of the entire ED, enabling clinicians to identify deteriorating patients more quickly and allocate resources effectively.

"The change has been transformative for our department, making nursing notes, patient vital signs and investigations readily available from any workstation," Petterson says.

"Previously we would have to hunt for observation charts and nursing notes and get infrequent updates which increased the risk of misses.

"On the first day of use I was able to more easily identify deteriorating patients and immediately see what interventions had been done and make timely treatment decisions,” he tells eHealthNews.

"As a lead clinician in a busy emergency department it has greatly increased my situational awareness and helped me to reprioritise limited resources accordingly."

Petterson says the rollout was staged to minimise staffing strain, beginning with electronic notes, then introducing Centric observations to replace the paper-based system, and finally transitioning to Centric-based digital triage.

Patient drug charts remain among the last paper-based documents in use during the transition period.

Bloomfield says there has been overwhelmingly positive feedback from clinicians using the system in recent Te Manawa Taki implementations.

"Clinicians report that the change has been easy, well supported, and they are asking for digitalisation of the rest of their workflow," he tells eHealthNews.

"The biggest challenge currently limiting the speed of the roll-out is addressing hospitals' infrastructure: getting hospitals' Wi-Fi surveyed and remediated, devices purchased and installed, and making adjustments to the physical lay-out of some wards/clinical areas to accommodate devices.”

He says the same programme team manages each implementation, working closely with local clinicians and hospital leaders to understand specific challenges and concerns. Rollout strategies are then tailored to each clinical area.

Image: Taranaki Base Emergency Department senior medical officer Timothy Petterson

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Alcidion has signed a formal collaboration agreement with Gold Coast Health, building on the partnership established earlier this year through the implementation of Alcidion’s Miya Precision remote patient monitoring software.

The agreement creates a formal framework for the continued development of healthcare technology and best practice to improve outcomes for patients and clinicians. Under the agreement, Alcidion and Gold Coast Health will collaborate on an ongoing basis to identify opportunities for innovation on the Miya Precision platform, informed by operational experience and clinical governance at one of Australia's fastest-growing health services. 

Both parties will work together to prioritise and implement identified enhancements, which will then be made available for other health services, using Miya Precision, to adopt.

As part of the agreement Gold Coast Health will develop a detailed reflection on its implementation journey, identifying areas for improvement and advancement benefiting future users.

The agreement represents a maturing relationship between health service and technology partnerships, moving beyond a traditional vendor-customer arrangement into genuine collaboration. 

Gold Coast Health Chief Digital Officer, Dom Girolamo, said: "The next generation of digital healthcare cannot be created in isolation. It needs to support continuous innovation with genuine co-design between health services, clinicians and technology partners.”

"Through our collaboration with Alcidion and supported by digital strategy, we have an opportunity to help shape digital tools that are intuitive, integrated and grounded in the realities of care delivery. This is central to our strategy to build a smarter, more connected digital health ecosystem that strengthens clinical decision making, enables new models of care and creates lessons that can benefit the wider health system."

Alcidion CEO Kate Quirke said: "The best healthcare technology is shaped by the people who use it every day. This agreement recognises the enormous value that Gold Coast Health's clinical and operational teams bring to the development process - their expertise and willingness to share what they learn will help us build better solutions for the sector.

"We're proud that Gold Coast Health has chosen to deepen our partnership in this way. It reflects a shared commitment to making digital health solutions work in practice, not just in principle - and to making those learnings available to other health services on the same journey.”

Image: Representatives from Alcidion and Gold Coast Health at the signing of the collaboration agreement during the Digital Health Festival in Melbourne.

Source: Alcidion media release

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InterSystems, a creative data technology provider powering more than one billion health records globally, today announced that its electronic health record (EHR) solutions have been certified as Class IIa Medical Devices under Regulation (MDR) certification under Regulation (EU) 2017/745. This approval marks the first fully unified AI-native EHR to achieve MDR Class IIa certification in the European Union.

This certification demonstrates that InterSystems AI-native EHR meets stringent EU safety and quality standards. This key milestone has significant implications for how healthcare organisations can responsibly scale AI while building confidence among healthcare providers and regulators.

InterSystems has secured MDR certification for InterSystems IntelliCare™, a next-generation EHR architected with native artificial intelligence capabilities, and InterSystems TrakCare®, a unified healthcare information system used by leading healthcare systems globally. Built on TrakCare’s proven interoperability foundation, InterSystems IntelliCare differentiates itself by delivering AI capabilities that are fundamentally designed into the platform’s data layer, rather than bolted on as third-party applications.

“Healthcare organisations are rightfully demanding that AI be more than just an experimental add-on,” said Don Woodlock, President, InterSystems. “By securing the EU’s first MDR certification for an AI-native EHR, we are establishing a standard that AI should be at the core of all healthcare applications.”

By moving beyond fragmented AI add-ons, InterSystems IntelliCare provides organisations with simplified oversight for their own governance, and clinicians with tools designed to reduce workload and burnout. The platform delivers instant patient summaries, AI driven clinical documentation, full chat experiences and intelligent workflows that maintain a critical "human-in-the-loop" safeguard. Features such as ambient clinical orchestration automatically capture, structure and save clinical data in real-time and suggest clinical documentation and orders for clinician approval. InterSystems IntelliCare also seamlessly connects with existing health IT infrastructures, leveraging InterSystems deep history in integration and data management capabilities.

Source: InterSystems media release

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Telstra Health today unveils Telstra Health Corus™, its new, cloud-native, standards-based, interoperable, care intelligence ecosystem designed to connect care across settings. 

Behind every person there’s a health story shaped by years of conversations, diagnoses and decisions. While that story belongs to them, they should not have to carry the burden of repeating it at every step of their care journey. However, this is the challenge facing modern healthcare: more information is available than ever before, yet clinicians and care teams have less time to make sense of it. 

Today, approximately 30% of the world’s data volume is generated by the healthcare industry, and this is growing at a rate of 63% annually. The shift to a more interoperable, AI-enabled health system is no longer aspirational; it is essential, and Telstra Health believes it has a responsibility to help lead that shift. 

Corus™ marks the first visible outcome of Telstra Health’s multi-year modernisation, underway since late 2024. It has been designed and built to global interoperability standards, informed by real world requirements across geographies and jurisdictions. 

Elizabeth Koff AM, Telstra Health’s Managing Director, explains, “Health and care services are managing unprecedented volumes of data on systems never designed for today’s complexity. Despite significant investment, care remains fragmented, and the gap between effort and impact continues to widen. Our ambition is simple and human: to create a world where health insight follows the person. This sits at the heart of our modernisation strategy, shaping how we invest, innovate, and partner to deliver transformative change across the Australian healthcare landscape and beyond.”

Built with clinical safety, strong cybersecurity, privacy and consent frameworks, Corus™ is designed to deliver shared capabilities across programs and care settings.  

• Corus iX™: the enterprise ‘data spine’ supporting interoperability and secure data exchange 
  
• At the heart of Corus™ is its interoperability and data exchange layer, Corus iX™ - an enterprise ‘data spine’ that enables reporting, predictive insights, AI clinical summaries, and population health tools. 
  
• The next generation of Telstra Health’s Health Information Exchange (HIE), Corus iX™ is built on Smile OmniVera HDP, a FHIR® native health data platform. It provides a governed, standards-based foundation for sharing information securely and in near real time across hospitals, primary care, aged care, community services, diagnostics, pharmacy and government programs.
  
• Corus iX™ enables reusable, modular interoperability services that can be deployed across programs and jurisdictions. This is designed to help reduce duplication, improve consistency, and make it faster to deliver connected services such as eRequesting, Smart Referrals, and eResults, at scale.
  

Helping clinicians deliver connected care for everyone 

Built for clinicians and designed to support all recipients of care, the development of Corus™ has been guided by Telstra Health's External Advisory Panel, clinical and non-clinical advisors from across the Australian health ecosystem. 

Dr Monica Trujillo, Telstra Health’s Chief Health and Risk Officer, comments, “True, connected care isn’t designed in a vacuum. Developed alongside frontline clinicians who live the challenges of fragmented systems, Corus™ represents a future where solutions work more effectively around the person. We aren't just building technology; we’re building that future with the people who are delivering care every day.”

The first capabilities delivered on Corus™ include Population Health, Care Navigation and Care Coordination. Population Health supports multiple population health and social services, while Care Navigation is among the first AI- enabled, omnichannel contact-centres, including a localised service directory. Care Coordination is designed to deliver ongoing coordination across multiple services over weeks or months. These capabilities will be available from the second half of 2026.

Dr Trujillo continues, “Health is deeply personal, yet our systems make care feel disconnected. Patients and their families should not have to retell their stories at their toughest moments, and clinicians should not be forced to make critical decisions without the full picture. It can impact the quality and safety of care. With Corus™, we aim to close the information gap by equipping clinicians with more connected, meaningful insights, helping them deliver safer, more seamless care that is built for a modern world.”

Multidisciplinary solutions, including primary care, community care, specialist care and allied health, will be available on Corus™ from mid-2027, with Aged Care solutions available from 2028. Additionally, AI-powered summaries and intuitive workflows will be gradually added to existing Aged Care and Primary Care environments, moving them closer to the Corus™ vision. 

A modern care intelligence ecosystem built for scale, security and innovation

Corus™ also represents a deliberate shift in how Telstra Health delivers digital health solutions: a cloud native, interoperable, care intelligence ecosystem, supported by market leading providers to deliver improved outcomes for our community. 

Farhoud Salimi, Chief Technology Officer at Telstra Health, says, “Health and care systems have more data, yet less ability to bring it together and make good use of it. We are addressing this with Corus™, building a shared digital capability and then reusing it many times across multiple care systems. This means reducing duplication while helping customers innovate faster, creating a more connected view across the care journey.”  

Corus™ brings together trusted data, FHIR®-native interoperability, AI-enabled intelligence and workflow-embedded experiences.  

“If connected care were purely a technology problem, we probably would have solved it by now. It’s not. It’s a system problem, and no single entity can solve that alone. By working with market-leading providers like Salesforce, Snowflake and Smile Digital Health, we are standardising core platform services, reducing complexity and thereby risk, while scaling solutions faster and with confidence. All delivered without disrupting the systems or solutions our customers rely on today,” adds Salimi.

A select group of eligible customers will be invited by Telstra Health to experience Corus™ ahead of the 2027 general release. Customers can also register interest at www.telstrahealth.com/corus.

Source: Telstra Health media release

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Royston Hospital in Hastings has introduced the first robotic-assisted surgical system in Hawke’s Bay, that significantly improves local access to advanced surgery for patients who previously had to travel outside the region for procedures. 

The Evolution Healthcare Group hospital has installed the Medtronic Hugo™ surgical robot, a technology that supports surgeons performing complex operations through small incisions with enhanced visualisation and precision.

The system is being used across several specialties, including urology and gynaecology as well as general surgical procedures.

Hawke’s Bay urologist, Dr Kenny du Toit, who trained on the Hugo system in Sydney before its deployment at Royston Hospital, said the local robotic-assisted technology is a significant win for surgeons and patients alike.

“Robotic-assisted surgery allows us to perform very complex procedures more efficiently and accurately. For suitable patients, that can mean a smoother recovery and a quicker return to normal activities.

“Importantly it also expands treatment options for local residents who previously may have needed to travel outside Hawke’s Bay for those procedures. We hope this soon provides a pathway to include all patients within both the private and public health sectors.”

Royston Hospital General Manager, Anna Harland, says the investment also reflects a broader commitment to improving access to advanced care while supporting regional clinical teams through training and collaboration.

“Introducing robotic-assisted surgery is an important milestone for healthcare in Hawke’s Bay. It enables our surgical teams to deliver modern techniques as well as allowing patients to remain close to their families and support networks during treatment.”

Royston Hospital has also hosted demonstration events for local doctors and healthcare professionals, providing an opportunity to see the system in operation and learn more about referral pathways and surgical planning using the technology. 

Source: Evolution Healthcare media release

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The world’s first health AI orchestrator, Orchestral, has launched Orchestral for Medication Safety, a product that supports clinicians to check prescriptions in real time inside pharmacy dispensing workflows to flag dose and interaction risks.

The product was developed in direct response to New Zealand’s rates of prescription errors. Estimates for how many people die in New Zealand as a result of prescription errors range hugely from around 2001. 

But from Orchestral’s point of view one person is too many whether that’s due to dosing errors or due to contraindications with other medications they are taking.

Lucy Porter, Chief Executive of Orchestral, said pharmacists are being asked to carry an unsustainable level of clinical risk and technology can solve this. 

“Last year, a week-long volunteer audit at 68 pharmacies in Midland New Zealand found 1,257 problems in prescriptions sent by GPs, specialists, midwives, dentists and other prescribers with 26% of these mistakes having a high risk of patient harm.

“If you extrapolate that data across the whole country there are one million problem scripts per year and 250,000 have a high risk of patient harm – we have to change this. 

“Pharmacists are expected to check every prescription under time pressure while holding thousands of drug interactions and clinical considerations in mind. That is not a people problem, it is a systems problem. 

“Orchestral for Medication Safety is designed to provide a safety net by checking every prescription, every interaction and every risk, inside the existing prescribing and dispensing workflow. This supports pharmacists' clinical judgement in real time,” says Porter. 

Orchestral for Medication Safety is delivered through the Orchestral platform, the world’s first health AI orchestrator, that empowers healthcare providers to harness the full potential of their data. 

The team are already having positive discussions in New Zealand about piloting this technology, and globally this is just one of the use cases for Orchestral that health systems are focused on.

Orchestral for Medication Safety sits within existing pharmacy dispensing systems. Prescriptions are checked automatically against dispensing guidelines to confirm dose safety and identify potential interactions with other medicines a patient is taking, with relevant alerts surfaced directly into the pharmacist’s workflow.

Medication safety is the first of a set of clinical safety workflows Orchestral is building for pharmacy and primary care.

“No patient should be left behind because of missed data. Yet no clinician can quickly connect all the available health information about a patient and relevant medical research with the current tools they have.

“More data is not the answer, better insight is. We’re here to turn the world’s scattered health data into life-saving insight that’s trusted, explainable, and ready for clinicians and patients when it matters most.

“The future of healthcare AI isn’t about more models or bigger clouds. It’s about orchestration like medication safety to make the whole system intelligent. That’s the category we’ve created,” says Porter.

Source: Orchestral media release

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Telstra Health, Australia’s largest digital health technology company, has today launched Smart Connect, a new pathology eRequesting capability within MedicalDirector Clinical, designed to replace manual, paper-based pathology requests with a fully digital workflow. The feature launches with Healius Pathology Network as its first integrated partner. 

Smart Connect allows GPs to generate, edit, electronically sign and securely send pathology eRequests directly from within their existing workflow, without leaving the MedicalDirector Clinical solution. Requests can be sent electronically to both patients and pathology laboratories, with radiology eRequesting to be added in future releases.

The launch comes as demand for diagnostic services continues to rise. eRequesting is becoming critical to maintaining efficient clinical workflows and supporting timely patient care. According to research conducted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 59 per cent of Australians accessed Medicare‑subsidised tests in 2022-23, with 91 per cent of those delivered through primary and community care.

“Too often, healthcare digitisation optimises one link in the chain, instead of supporting every stakeholder across the patient journey,” said Dr Jennifer Beer, Product Executive at Telstra Health. “Smart Connect breaks that pattern — reducing admin for clinicians, removing paper for patients, and freeing pathology staff from manual data entry. That end‑to‑end impact is what truly transformative healthcare technology looks like.”

Smart Connect is powered by Telstra Health’s FHIR-native Health Information Exchange (HIE), enabling clinical information to be shared securely and in near real time between MedicalDirector Clinical and integrated pathology providers. 

Following the initial launch with Healius, Telstra Health will work with additional pathology providers in the coming months to support broader adoption of eRequesting across primary care.
Healius Chief Operations Officer, Puneet Nagi, said the partnership marked a significant step forward in collaboration between pathology providers and clinicians, helping improve efficiency and patient experience. 

“By enabling secure, near real-time electronic requests, we’re helping GPs reduce administrative burden and find more time for patient care, while making it easier for patients to access and follow-up their results. This is particularly important in today’s virtual, digital-first and telehealth-enabled environment,” he said. 

“Through Smart Connect, our laboratories benefit from structured, legible and editable requests — helping to minimise transcription errors and reduce processing delays.” 

Smart Connect is the latest addition to MedicalDirector Clinical’s suite of digital workflow tools, which also includes Smart Scribe, an AI-powered clinical documentation capability, and integrated Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activities.

“Smart Connect is just one way we’re addressing longstanding issues with siloed data and fragmented workflows — securely connecting MedicalDirector GPs with pathology providers, and soon, radiology providers,” Dr Beer said. 

To find out more about Smart Connect, visit https://www.medicaldirector.com/smarter

Source: Telstra Health media release

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BPAC Clinical Solutions has today announced the launch of BPAC CareSuite, a new home for its suite of healthcare decision support tools, aimed primarily at general practices in New Zealand.

This is an exciting development that will, over time, see all BPAC decision support tools available in one place. BPAC CareSuite will enable easy access through patient management systems.

BPAC Clinical Solutions, Chief Executive Officer, Karl Andrews, commented: “This is a significant development for BPAC Clinical Solutions. We are pleased to provide greater accessibility for the delivery of our solutions to clinicians, that help ease workload pressures and support consistent, high-quality clinical advice.”

The launch of BPAC CareSuite coincides with the release of the ACC Certification Dashboard. This tool has been developed in collaboration with the ACC Performance Team to provide practitioners with detailed information on medical certification practice, including the number and ratio of ‘fully unfit’ and ‘fit for selected work’ certificates, average incapacity durations, and return-to-work timeframes.

The first release of our new decision support tools is the Brain Injury Screening Tool (BIST), developed in association with AUT. The BIST has been developed as an interactive tool that integrates with MedTech and Indici to provide patient-specific clinical advice to support the assessment and management of suspected brain injury or concussion.

Professor Alice Theadom of AUT’s Brain Health Research Institute said: “We are excited that the BPAC team have picked up and further developed BIST. When we originally developed BIST to help clinicians assess and manage suspected brain injury or concussion, it was important that the tool was easily accessible and aligned with best practice for both clinicians and patients. Integration into BPAC’s suite of tools adds a valuable new dimension to its ongoing evolution.”

Clinicians or practices wishing to access BPAC CareSuite are encouraged to visit caresuite.co.nz and complete the registration form. Once enabled, users will have access to BIST (from early March) and the ACC Certification Dashboard, with additional tools becoming available as they are introduced.

Source: BPAC Clinical Solutions media release

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Around 125 aged residential care (ARC) facilities across New Zealand will begin implementing the Deterioration Early Warning System (DEWS) from April 2026, with all but one using digitised versions integrated into their resident management systems.

The Health Quality & Safety Commission Te Tāhū Hauora is coordinating the phase one rollout, with staff training and data collection beginning in February and March 2026 and facilities starting integrating  digital DEWS from April.

Nikki Grae, HQSC senior manager quality systems, says the system provides a standardised, evidence-based approach for recognising and responding to acute deterioration in older people living in aged care. 
“This system was co-designed with the ARC sector – is world-leading and unique to New Zealand,” she says.

It is made up of three tools that trigger clinical escalation pathways with automated alerts and notifications to ensure timely interventions.

The Commission is working with RMS vendors to translate the three paper DEWS tools into a digital format. Two of the five main resident management system vendors used in New Zealand have digitised DEWS, and two other vendors are actively developing digital versions.

“The majority of ARC providers use electronic RMS so digital integration of the tools enables DEWS to be embedded into everyday clinical workflows, reducing duplication and supporting consistent use by staff,” says Grae.

“Digitised DEWS will enable a standardised, sustainable process. It allows data collection to be automated and reduces the burden of manual data collection on staff.”

Speaking at Digital Health Week NZ, CEO and founder of Hercules Health Gillian Robinson said the company has completed the digitisation process for DEWS and is awaiting education packages from the commission to support the system's rollout across aged care facilities using its system.

Robinson said this development of DEWS forms part of a broader transformation in aged care from reactive to proactive care delivery.

Data from Hercules Health's system shows more than 67,000 falls have been recorded over the past decade across client facilities, highlighting the scale of adverse events in aged care settings for residents over 65.

The company's new data dashboards enable real-time analysis of incident patterns, allowing clinical teams to identify risk factors and implement preventive measures before injuries occur.

"Data does not make decisions, but it certainly empowers better clinical decisions by the teams," Robinson explained.

"Decisions needed to be informed by live current data, not historic data reported sometime after the event.”

The digitisation of DEWS will create an even richer dataset for preventive care learning, supporting the sector's transition from reactive to proactive care delivery models, Robinson told conference attendees.

Grae says future implementation phases will be planned and facilitated by the Commission to support ARC providers interested in using DEWS over the next two to three years. Phase two and beyond involves the implementation of digital DEWS in facilities as more RMS platforms integrate the tools.

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The continuing use of paper-based referral and prescribing systems in hospitals is compromising patient safety  and reveals critical gaps in New Zealand's digital infrastructure, the health and disability commissioner says.

Speaking at Digital Health Week 2025, Morag McDowell said disparities in access to electronic prescribing systems across the country are leaving some facilities without basic digital drug alert capabilities.

She highlighted the case of a cardiac surgery patient with a documented penicillin allergy who suffered life-threatening anaphylaxis because of inconsistent allergy documentation across multiple hospital systems.

"When the HDC did its investigation, the documentation of the allergy on the national medication chart was very inconsistent and there were multiple errors throughout the clinical records, across multiple staff members and across multiple teams about his allergy status," McDowell said in her keynote address.

The investigation found the failures represented a systemic breach of patients' rights to services of a reasonable standard and the hospital has since developed a new single patient management system with electronic drug alerts.

In another case, a GP's paper referral letter expressing concerns about possible subacute bacterial endocarditis was lost, so was not seen by the treating clinicians.

"Evidence to the investigation showed that the GP to hospital referral system had been something of an issue for years for which no sustainable solution had been found," the commissioner told attendees.

The lost referral was a missed opportunity for timely diagnosis and resulted in breach findings for both reasonable standard of care and cooperation among providers to ensure continuity of care.

Digital systems that do not talk to each other are also adding risks, such as a case where a patient with bowel symptoms and an identified pelvic mass had their care delayed because of lack of integration.

"There had been a business case put forward about 10 years earlier for system integration which regrettably had been declined due to cost and time," McDowell said.

She also told the conference that patients have rights to informed consent regarding AI, telehealth, and other digital tools. Providers must explain why tools are being used, their benefits, limitations, risks, and mitigation strategies, plus any alternative options.

"People do have the right to decline their use, but of course should be told of the risks of doing so," she said, adding that digital tools such as AI cannot substitute for clinical judgement, and providers retain responsibility for decisions made and actions taken.

"Please read those AI notes, double read the AI imaging, reflect on the diagnosis," said McDowell.

Image: Health and disability commissioner Morag McDowell speaking at Digital Health Week 2025

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SECTOR UPDATE - Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora 

New digital technology that will support the New Dunedin Hospital Outpatient Building is being rolled out ahead of the facility opening next year.   

A Digital Health Design Lab has been set up on Cumberland Street, across from the new outpatient building, where Health New Zealand teams are fine-tuning the digital systems that will be used in the new hospital. 

New Dunedin Hospital Digital Programme Director Phil Baskerville says the new technology is being developed in real time and will improve the patient experience in the new hospital. 

“The lab is fully equipped with one of every type of digital device that is going into the outpatient building, allowing teams to validate some of the new models of care and make sure everything works well in real-life situations before commissioning begins.” 

What’s Coming to the New Hospital? 

The hospital will feature modern technology designed to make healthcare more efficient and user-friendly. Some of the key upgrades include: 

• Smarter scheduling: A new digital booking system and patient SMS/email system that will replace the current mix of letters, spreadsheets, whiteboards, and paper forms. 
• Digital signage and wayfinding: Screens and devices will help patients and visitors find their way around the hospital. 
• Patient journey boards: These will show real-time updates on appointments, clinic locations, and patient flow. 

The new scheduling system for clinical use is being rolled out early, so staff can make use of it before the hospital opens. It will feed information directly to the patient journey boards, helping staff manage appointments and clinic flow more smoothly. 

“These tools will make communication faster and clearer across the hospital,” Baskerville says. 

Less Paper, More Time for Patients

One major change is the move away from paper-based documentation. Going digital will lead to greater accuracy and provide faster access to critical information, as well as reducing admin work for staff.  

A Model for Future Hospitals 

The digital systems being tested in Dunedin will also help guide digital upgrades to other hospitals across the country like Nelson and Whangārei as part of the Regional Hospital Redevelopment Programme. 

Funding Snapshot 

• $225.5 million was allocated in Budget 2022 for the New Dunedin Hospital’s digital programme
• $82.4 million is already committed to the Outpatient Building
• The rest is set aside for future work in the Inpatient Building
  

Source: Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora media release

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Echo-Health has integrated its AI-powered scribe and patient communication technology directly into Medtech Evolution’s practice management software (PMS), creating a seamless clinical workflow that processes consultation data in real-time.

The integration, which went live in May 2025, allows clinicians to act directly within their workflow. Along with AI scribe functionality, clinicians can create letters, referrals and updates without leaving their existing Medtech Evolution environment.

The system listens to consultations with ambient speech recognition, analysing patient literacy, emotions and sentiment, and automatically produces personalised notes with pre-filled templates to update patient records. 

The patient experience is enhanced by sending reminders, booking links, plain language summaries, and educational materials to patients via SMS post-consultation.

Echo-Health is also developing a mobile version that allows clinicians to use the AI scribe functionality from their phones, all while maintaining the seamless clinical workflow directly into Medtech Evolution.

The power of integration

Cecilia Harris, founder and chief executive of Echo-Health, says the company is focused on three key components when looking at AI.

“We are very focused on the patient, we are very focused on the clinicians, and we are also focused on interoperability,” she says.

"We are different to competitors because we believe integration is absolutely critical to the long term workflow and integration of AI technology.

“So we looked for a partner that believed in the same thing, and Medtech, with their ALEX® platform, have all the existing infrastructure to make it very straightforward.”

Harris says that with Medtech being the leading PMS provider in New Zealand it was a “no brainer” to partner with them, and it has worked perfectly.

Integration using the Medtech ALEX® API means that unlike standalone scribe solutions that require copying and pasting information between systems, Echo-Health automatically places clinical content in the relevant sections of the patient record.

The system updates observations directly into Medtech Evolution’s screenings section and an upcoming integration with SR Referrals will automatically populate referral information.

Alex Cauble-Chantrenne, Medtech programme manager (Integrations) says ALEX® enables rapid development and deployment of these types of integrations without partners having to wait for practice management software release schedules.

This allows innovative companies like Echo-Health to develop and release new features themselves, while maintaining security and workflow integration standards.

Protecting patient information

Echo-Health processes all data in real-time without transferring patient information to external servers.

Patient identifiable information never enters its system, with the company pulling details like patient names and NHI numbers directly from the practice management software when formatting documents.

Harris says, "we do not take that information, we do not hold that information, so we do not pass that information back through the LLM in any way, shape or form.”

This approach addresses potential concerns about AI tools accessing patient data as the scribe strips any identifying information before processing, ensuring patient privacy remains protected, she says.

Lawrence Peterson, Medtech general manager integration and infrastructure, says patient data stays in the PMS where it belongs, rather than being spread out around the cloud.

“In-line processing means the only time the patient data is accessed is during the consultation and should a later ‘follow-up’ piece of work be required, such as checking for results, this can be performed later also as an inline request,” he says.

A user perspective

Bream Bay Medical Centre and Tui Medical are already using the integrated scribe, along with several other New Zealand practices.

Kay Brittenden, Bream Bay practice manager, says the security provided by an integrated AI scribe was the key factor for her when looking at options.

The medical centre, which looks after 9,500 patients with a team of 38 including 13
doctors, started using Echo-Health in June 2025.

"Security was the big concern for me and we always get the patient’s consent," she says.

"It is saving the doctors a lot of time and they are capturing more information from the consult, which is really the main benefit."

One doctor was surprised at how quickly she has adopted the technology into her day-to-day work, as she previously did not think she would ever use it, Brittenden explains.

Nurses are now also trialling the scribe and clinical staff are working with Echo-health to customise templates to meet their particular needs.

The future

Harris says future developments for Echo-Health include linking with clinical prescription databases to provide drug interaction alerts and allergy warnings.

"We are in conversation whereby we are linking in with a well-known clinical provider of prescription information that can bring up prompts on drug and allergy alerts, and drug on drug interactions," she says.

"We are focused on everything being done in a clinically safe way."

The system can also access existing patient information to provide prompts during consultations. This capability could alert doctors to missed screenings, overdue check-ups, or relevant medical history that may inform their treatment decisions.

The use of SNOMED coding means that in the future the system could also validate information by checking with another system.

“It is a very exciting future of what we can do within that space,” says Harris.

Watch the webinar Medtech ALEX® & Echo-Health - See SR Referrals Integration & Mobile Access in Action

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

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SECTOR UPDATE - Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora

Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora is in negotiations with PMS suppliers (MedTech, Valentia, MyPractice and IntraHealth) to enter into new statements of work to support the GP2GP stabilisation work.

It is anticipated that PMS suppliers will prioritise implementing the latest version of GP2GP into their applications once these agreements are finalised. Following this, they would work with us on implementing further stabilisation activities.
 
HealthLink* will soon enable a feature which will allow larger files, up to 50MB, to be transferred over their network. HealthLink, Health NZ and the PMS suppliers will need to work collaboratively on implementing this new feature before it can be used by practices. Allowing larger files to be transferred between PMS systems will reduce the need for practice staff to manually break up files for a patient transfer.
 
When the GP2GP stabilisation activities are completed across the PMS applications, practices will start seeing improved reliability and safety – fewer data inconsistencies and errors, less need for manual intervention in managing file sizes, and regular testing to ensure ongoing stability of the GP2GP service.
 
More information about GP2GP is available on the Health NZ website.
 
*HealthLink is a messaging system used to send information between GPs, via Connected Health.

Source: Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora media release

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SECTOR UPDATE - Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora 

For the first time in public hospitals across Australasia, patients will benefit from increased access and faster, higher-resolution imaging as part of Health New Zealand’s digital innovation programme aimed at improving patient outcomes.

The very first new “Photon Counting” CT (PCCT) scanner in New Zealand will today begin operating at Christchurch Hospital. The scanner is a key element of Health New Zealand’s focus on using advances in technology to improve patient care.

Health New Zealand Radiologist Dr Alistair Rumball-Smith says: “This technology offers a significant step change in image quality, similar to shifting from black-and-white TV to 4K Ultra HD.”

“We can see the potential of photon-counting technology across a range of clinical areas and, as the clinical benefits evolve, will explore broader applications and develop new models of care to maximise the technology's impact.”

The PCCT scanner provides significantly sharper imaging than conventional CT machines, providing radiologists and cardiologists with better tools to do their job. 

They improve the quality and quantity of cardiac services, helping us to meet national health targets. Semi-urgent and more routine procedures including patients with heart valve disease or chronic coronary syndrome will have diagnostic imaging quicker, freeing up staff and facilities to focus on patients with more acute or complex needs. 

Health New Zealand CEO Dr Dale Bramley says the benefits to patients offered by the new PCCT scanner is just one example of how digital innovation can support better health outcomes.

“We will continue to invest in new technologies that support our teams to give patients better access to the treatments they need. The PCCT scanners are an excellent example of how advanced digital tools can assist us to do more and make best use of our clinical resources.”

Future proofing our healthcare, the new technology puts patients at the centre by creating new opportunities for patient care and cardiac diagnostics. It also improves access for people previously limited by traditional CTs, including those with irregular heart rhythms, reduced kidney function, limited mobility or bariatric patients.

Christchurch cardiologist and researcher Dr Charlotte Greer has recently been awarded a Heart Foundation Senior Fellowship to explore the potential of PCCTs to evaluate heart muscle structure and function to diagnose heart diseases.

“Radiology has worked in partnership with Cardiology for many years. These machines provide an exciting opportunity to continue working together to evolve and improve outcomes for our patients,” Dr Greer says.

Source: Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora media release

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indici is proud to announce the release of its direct integration with the National Cervical Screening Programme’s (NCSP) Cervical Screening History Summary.

Previously, clinicians had to phone the national cervical screening service to obtain a patient’s history, it’s a time-consuming process that often-disrupted consultations. With this new integration, clinicians can now securely access a patient’s complete screening history directly within indici, with a single click using the Time to Screen button.

The Cervical Screening History Summary provides real-time access to patient details, next expected screening events, and full screening history. This makes consultations faster, more efficient, and ensures that patients are offered the correct test at the right time.

Feedback from frontline clinicians

Early adopters have already highlighted the positive impact of this integration on both patient care and practice workflows:

“I think the Time to Screen shortcut has been one of the most useful additions to my quality of consultation. I do a lot of cervical smears and it is now really easy to check a clients screening history. having access to a client’s history enables me to provide care that is opportunistic and ensures that I offer the client the correct test based on their history. I love that I can download the report into Indici and therefore add it as attachments to referrals and letters etc. Accessing a clients history is now an efficient use of time during consultation.” - Registered Nurse, Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa

“The Time to Screen button has revolutionised our recall process. It provides timely information to our team of recall nurses, enabling us to better ensure that we recall clients at the right time.”

Clinical Information Specialist, Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (https://sexualwellbeing.org.nz/)

Collaborative Rollout with Health NZ

This integration is being rolled out collaboratively by indici and Health New Zealand. Because cervical screening access requires a separate Terms of Use agreement to be signed at the practice level, the rollout is being governed by Health NZ. The aim is to complete the rollout across all indici practices before the end of this year.

Imran Rashid, Development Manager at indici, said: "we have worked closely with Health New Zealand on this integration and are proud to be the only PMS to have released this feature.

"The early rollout across 12 practices has already shown excellent feedback from clinicians and administrators. To make the Time to Screen option as accessible as possible, we have embedded it across multiple areas of the system, including the inbox, patient file, cervical recall management, and measurement sections. Clinicians also have the ability to download the screening summary, making it easy to attach to referrals and letters. Having one-click, real-time access to cervical screening register data adds significant value to practices. It improves efficiency, supports opportunistic care, and ensures clinicians can provide the right care to patients when it is needed most.”

Supporting better patient outcomes

By embedding cervical screening data directly into the patient management system, indici empowers clinicians to make evidence-based decisions in real time. This integration supports opportunistic screening, improves recall accuracy, and ensures that patients receive the right test at the right time.

Source: Valentia Technologies media release

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Medtech Global has integrated with dermatology platform DermEngine to help general practitioners and dermatologists offer expanded skin care services directly within their Medtech Evolution practice management software (PMS).

The integration streamlines workflow for GPs and specialists while improving patient outcomes through faster diagnosis and monitoring.

Enabling access to care 

DermEngine is AI-powered dermatology software for the imaging, documentation and analysis of skin conditions including skin cancer, and is used by general practitioners, dermatologists, dermoscopy nurses and skin specialists.

With a strong global presence across markets such as Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and beyond, DermEngine is widely recognised for advancing digital dermatology infrastructure and helping clinics integrate modern imaging and documentation practices into their daily workflows. 
 
A new integration with Medtech Evolution through the company’s ALEX® (Application Layer EXchange) allows doctors and specialists to access the smart dermatology system without leaving their PMS. 
 
Alex Cauble-Chantrenne, Medtech programme manager (integrations), says there is a growing trend among Kiwi GPs getting qualified to perform dermatology screenings and minor procedures that previously needed specialist referrals. 
 
"We have more and more GPs who are able to do a wound or a mole removal - that is becoming increasingly common,” she explains. 
 
The integration automatically loads patient information when a GP or specialist accesses DermEngine through Medtech Evolution, so there is no need to search for patients across multiple systems and introduce potential user errors. 
 
Lawrence Peterson, Medtech general manager integration and infrastructure, says the collaboration with DermEngine is great for New Zealand customers as the platform is already well-established in Australia. 
 
It can provide a new revenue stream for GP practices by enabling them to offer specialist services in-house, while also improving patient outcomes through faster care and early detection. 
 
While minor issues can be dealt with in primary care, GPs still refer complex cases to specialists when necessary and dermatologists using Medtech Evolution also get significant benefits from the improved workflow, he explains. 

AI-powered skin cancer detection

DermEngine is an advanced skin cancer and dermatology platform designed to support healthcare providers with medical imaging, documentation, and workflow optimisation.

The software is used by general practitioners, dermatologists, dermoscopy nurses, and skin specialists around the world to manage and organise clinical images in a secure, cloud-based environment. 
 
Pegah Kamali, marketing and business development manager, Asia Pacific at MetaOptima, explains that through its AI-powered tools, DermEngine enhances how clinicians capture, compare, and track images over time, supporting streamlined record-keeping and efficient clinical decision-making.

By simplifying image management and case documentation, DermEngine reduces administrative burdens and enables providers to focus more time on patient care. 
 
"If you do not know what is happening on your skin, especially on the back or on parts that the patient cannot monitor, this imaging and this documentation ensures they are not missing anything," she says. 
 
The new integration with Medtech saves time during patient consultations, allowing doctors to spend more time examining patients rather than doing administrative tasks, she explains. 
 
DermEngine includes two main imaging components: dermoscopy for detailed lesion photography and total body photography for comprehensive skin mapping. 

Application Layer EXchange - ALEX®

The integration was made possible by Medtech’s ALEX® platform, which enables event driven data sharing using FHIR® APIs. 
 
Third parties such as DermEngine are able to work seamlessly within the PMS and are governed by a Medtech Partner Programme Code of Conduct. 
 
Peterson explains: "the true benefit behind it is that it keeps the clinician inside of Medtech and it has a deep integration at the back which allows the exchange and sharing of information in a consented and secure manner.” 
 
Cauble-Chantrenne says that GPs have many increasing interactions with external parties weekly, making streamlined integrations all the more valuable. 
 
She says the ALEX® platform has matured significantly over recent years, allowing partners to integrate more quickly than previously, when extensive scopes of work and scheduled releases were often required. 
 
"It is night and day compared to how integrations historically happened: anybody can easily work with us if their solution is going to bring benefits to GPs," she says. 
 
Kamali says it has been a very easy and rewarding process to partner with Medtech via the ALEX®  platform. 
  
“The collaboration has strengthened DermEngine’s ability to deliver smarter, more connected skin cancer solutions and created real value for both clinicians and patients,” she says. 
 

To learn more about the integration with DermEngine, join the ALEX® Partner Webinar: Enhancing Clinical Workflows with DermEngine and Medtech Evolution at 1pm on September 10, 2025. 

Register here

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

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SECTOR UPDATE - Bupa New Zealand

Bupa New Zealand is rolling out a digital tool to help aged care employees consistently identify and respond to early signs of health deterioration in residents.

The tool is based on the Deterioration Early Warning System (DEWS), which was trialled at Bupa’s Northhaven Care Home during a feasibility study conducted in partnership with the Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission and the University of Auckland.

“DEWS helps us spot subtle health issues early, so we can take action sooner to help prevent serious problems and support better outcomes for our residents.” - Sandy Turnwald, Clinical and Quality Director at Bupa New Zealand.

Developed in New Zealand by Julie Daltrey, Aged Residential Care Clinical Lead at Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission, and Dr Michal Boyd, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Auckland, DEWS enables caregivers and nurses to recognise small but significant changes in a resident’s health - such as increased fatigue or reduced appetite, before more serious symptoms appear.

“Caregivers often notice when something isn’t quite right. This evidence-based system gives structure to those observations and automatically escalates concerns to the Registered Nurse to take action,” says Turnwald.

DEWS consists of three tools:

1. Quick-DEWS: Caregivers answer nine questions about each resident each shift. If changes are noted, the concern is escalated to the registered nurse (RN).
2. RN-DEWS: The RN conducts a full clinical assessment, generating a score and checklist to guide next steps, such as closer monitoring or contacting a doctor or nurse practitioner.
3. SBARR-DEWS: communication and critical thinking tool to standardise handover to primary or secondary care.

Northhaven was one of five New Zealand aged care homes that tested the paper version of DEWS, which showed improved health outcomes for residents. Based on the results, Bupa decided to roll out the system to all 40 of its care homes and integrate it into its electronic resident management system, enhancing usability, consistency and visibility across care teams.

Bupa is also convening a working group with two other aged care providers using the VCare management system. Together, with VCare, they are building and testing the digital version of DEWS which is expected to be available to all VCare users by the end of the year.

To support the sector wide rollout, Te Tāhū Hauora Health Quality & Safety Commission is developing supporting resources, including online training, with more information to be shared with the aged care sector in the next 2-3 months. If any ARC facilities are interested in implementing DEWS, please contact DEWS@hqsc.govt.nz for more information.

“This is a New Zealand-made tool that improves care for older people,” says Turnwald. “We’re working to making easy to use and accessible to others.”

Source: Bupa New Zealand 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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