Rachael Page

Rachael Page has returned to contracting after stepping down as chief executive of HealthOne and has joined the New Dunedin Outpatients Hospital Digital Programme Team as final preparations are completed ahead of opening later this year. 

Across 12.5 years with HealthOne and ERMS, Page held project, product, programme and general management roles. She oversaw the South Island–wide rollout connecting hospitals, general practice and pharmacy, followed by expansion into hundreds of community health settings. 

The lower North Island is now close to joining the shared electronic health record, while ERMS has been modernised and securely delivers around 80,000 referrals each month. 

Nicola Hart

Nicola Hart is the new chief executive of HealthOne Limited Partnership, the organisation behind both shared electronic health record platform HealthOne and the electronic request management system, ERMS, both of which are co-designed with NZ clinicians. 

With a background including health sector executive leadership and being a registered pharmacist herself, Hart brings a passion for connected, patient centred care to the role.  She is excited to be leading the organisation at a pivotal time for health system transformation and is looking forward to working with more clinicians, enabling them to improve patient outcomes across Aotearoa.

Robyn Whittaker  

Robyn Whittaker has been appointed clinical director at HealthX.
She says the role is about applying a clinical lens to HealthX initiatives and building a clinical community of people to assist with that.

This includes leading a clinical innovation advisory group to assess potential initiatives and ensuring each project has a clinical champion. 

HealthX director Sonny Taite says clinical leadership is paramount to the programme's objectives.

Jakub Jurkiewicz 

Jakub Jurkiewicz brings over 20 years of engineering and transformation experience to his role as chief product and technology officer for Medtech Global. From clinical systems at Orion Health to enterprise transformation at Air New Zealand, ASB Bank, and Medenterprises, he has a track record of building high-performing teams and technology that improves patient outcomes. 

His mission at Medtech Global: AI-powered connected healthcare solutions for primary care providers across New Zealand and Australia. He is also the founder of Tech Waka, Aotearoa's community for technology leaders, and holds a PhD in software engineering.

Becky George

Becky George has stepped into the role of national service portfolio group manager – clinical common and specialised service at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.

George brings a wealth of experience to the position, drawing on over two decades of work across clinical and digital domains. In this new capacity, her focus shifts toward the steady work of consolidating and modernising the digital tools our health workforce relies on every day. 

The scope of the portfolio covers all commonly used clinical products i.e. portals as well as the products and applications that enable workflow, communication, documentation, and all speciality service provision. By focusing on stabilising and refining these products, the Portfolio team aims to ensure consistent and reliable support for clinicians in their roles.

Jono O’Sullivan Scott 

Jono O’Sullivan Scott is a doctor with a passion for clinical innovation and health tech. He recently joined Heidi Health as Clinical Specialist, working closely with Heidi's Global chief medical officer and ANZ clinical director across commercial, product and clinical safety, as the company works to double the world's healthcare capacity. 
Outside Heidi, Jono runs Steth to Startup, a project that lifts the lid on how clinicians move into

innovation and entrepreneurship, through interviews with people who've made the leap and honest reflections on his own journey.

Julian Verkaaik

Medical technology innovator Julian Verkaaik is moving to MARS Bioimaging to head up their product and marketing team. Julian joins MARS Bioimaging at a significant stage in their timeline following their recent Series A funding and FDA 510(k) clearance for their proprietary mobile photon counting CT scanner. 

The new role sees Verkaaik return to the medical technology devices field following a three year executive tenure at Streamliners where he led their digital health product team and helped shape HealthPathways to be a globally trusted source of localised guidance. 

Most recently, he helped form and promote the partnership between Heidi Health and Streamliners to bring HealthPathways into AI enhanced clinician workflows.

Brad Porter

HEALWELL AI has appointed Brad Porter to its Board of Directors to strengthen the Company’s commercial and strategic expertise.

Ian McCrae is stepping down from the Board of Directors to focus on other ventures following the successful integration of Orion Health into HEALWELL.

Porter is the chief commercial officer of HEALWELL and chief executive of Orion Health, bringing over 15 years of experience in finance, commercial leadership, and global healthcare technology. 

A chartered accountant by training, he has held senior commercial roles at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare and has led Orion Health, driving innovation in health data platforms and AI-enabled care. At HEALWELL, he oversees group-wide commercial strategy, revenue growth, and go-to-market alignment, with a focus on public sector opportunities and government contracts.

Sonya Smith

Sonya Smith brings a rare combination of clinical expertise, iwi health leadership and frontline community experience to her new role as relationship manager at Noted.

With over 36 years as a nurse and a career spanning hospital management, director of health at Ngāti Porou Oranga, and founder of Hikanui Hauora, Smith understands what health and social services providers need from their systems.

Known for her authentic stakeholder relationships and her ability to bridge te ao Māori and mainstream health systems, she champions technology that genuinely serves communities.

Smith is passionate about ensuring Noted's case management solution reaches providers and works for everyone - from large national organisations to the smallest kaupapa Māori services.

Ian Manovel

Ian Manovel has recently joined NRI as general manager, digital health for Australia and New Zealand. NRI’s Planit business in New Zealand provides end-to-end testing and quality engineering services, including test strategy, automation, performance, assurance and transformation support to improve software quality, reduce risk, and accelerate delivery outcomes.

“Across the region, health systems are under tremendous pressure to increase value so technology is accelerating the convergence of payers and providers” says Manovel.

“This trend enables ‘payviders’ to emerge as data-driven, patient-centric organisations - shifting health, aged and disability care from fragmented, episodic transactions to integrated, outcomes-focused models of care that improve access, efficiency and outcomes at scale while reducing cost to serve by managing populations in their own homes.”

Sophie Walton-Smith

Sophie Walton-Smith has joined the Sense Medical team as an intermediate frontend developer. 

Bringing experience from working across a variety of user-facing SaaS web applications, she is excited to expand the web capabilities of Cortex, Sense Medical's care coordination platform, with a focus on delivering a seamless cross-platform experience with the Cortex iOS app. 

Walton-Smith is looking forward to contributing to Sense Medical's broader mission of driving better patient outcomes through technology built around the needs of the clinicians who rely on it every day.

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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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The Medical Products Bill will create a modern regulatory framework for software used in healthcare, targeting therapeutic applications and not administrative tools, says associate minister of health Casey Costello. 

Costello spoke at the Digital Health Leadership Forum in Wellington on May 12 where she said the new legislation will regulate software and artificial intelligence only when used for therapeutic purposes such as diagnosis, treatment guidance or disease monitoring. 

General administrative and operational tools, including clinical administration systems and AI scribes, will remain outside the regulatory scope, she confirmed.

The Medical Products Bill replaces the Therapeutic Products Act, which the government repealed in 2024, and is expected to be introduced in 2026.

"Good regulation enables innovation rather than stifling it," Costello told the forum. 

"The bill will replace an outdated regulatory framework with a modern, flexible one that supports both safety and, importantly, innovation."

She told the more than 200 attendees that the framework aligns with international definitions and takes what she described as a "targeted and proportionate approach" to oversight. 

It allow for a “flexible, risk-proportionate approval pathway” designed to accommodate innovative and evolving technologies.

"It provides certainty for industry, supports exports and enables the safe uptake of digital health tools across the system," said Costello.

She also said that cyber security, privacy and data protection are key to public confidence in the health system and digital health organisations must meet appropriate standards for security, privacy and assurance.

"Innovation must go hand in hand with accountability," Costello said. 

"This is not slowing innovation, it is about making sure digital services are trusted, resilient and sustainable, especially as technology becomes more embedded in care delivery."

The Digital Health Leadership Forum was co-led by HiNZ and the Digital Health Association.

Image: Associate minister of health Casey Costello speaking at the Digital Health Leadership Forum in Wellington on 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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Health New Zealand's HealthX programme is rolling out 100 remote patient monitoring kits (RPM) to six hospitals across Wellington, Waikato, Tairāwhiti, and Whangārei, cutting the time needed to stabilise heart failure patients on medication from six months to six weeks.

The expansion follows a successful regional trial using Spritely in the Hawke’s Bay that showed 80 percent of heart failure patients reached recommended medication levels within six weeks using remote monitoring, compared to five to six months under traditional care models.

Health Minister Simeon Brown, writing in a column for eHealthNews, says remote monitoring devices and virtual check-ins allow clinicians to track patient conditions and respond early if something changes.

One hundred RPM kits have been approved and are now being introduced in stages across Wellington, Waikato, Tairāwhiti, and Whangārei.

“Each monitoring kit can also be reused, making it a practical way to extend specialist care and manage demand,” says Brown.

Sonny Taite, director of innovation and AI at Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora, said at the recent AI in Clinical Practice conference in Auckland that the programme enables care across rural locations, addressing one of HealthX's three core pressure areas alongside workforce challenges and clinical inefficiencies.

A recent example from Kaitaia showed the system's flexibility when a rural cardiology nurse needed to take a holiday and the team was able to redirect weekly patient consultations to Whāngerei Hospital without interruption to the patient’s care, he said.

At a recent HiNZ workshop in Auckland – From IT to Digital and AI in Health – the Health New Zealand Hawke's Bay team presented on the heart failure project and said it is saving approximately $10,000 per patient while delivering faster care to rural and underserved communities.

The virtual care programme is supported by Spritely and provides patients with blood pressure monitors, oximeters and tablets for remote monitoring. Patients receive daily questionnaires and observation monitoring, with weekly consultations conducted remotely and the programme runs for 90 days before discharge.

Nurse practitioner Daman Kaur said it achieves shorter time frames, quicker time slots, frequent appointments, no patient or clinician travel, no readmissions and no DNAs.

"This is a win win situation for patients, clinicians, the health dollar, equity, access and models of care,” she told the Auckland audience.

HealthX launched in September 2025. The RPM solution is one of five initiatives being delivered as part of its monthly rollout programme designed to rapidly deploy AI and innovative solutions across the public health system.

Image: Daman Kaur presenting on the Hawke’s Bay virtual care project at HiNZ event - From IT to Digital and AI in Health – March 2026

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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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