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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A Dunedin medical centre has developed what it calls the Broadway Intelligence Suite, combining a number of AI and other digital tools to help it solve multiple friction points. 

Doug Hill, specialist general practitioner and practice owner at Broadway Medical Centre, spoke at HiNZ’s Southern Connections event in Dunedin on July 29 where he said the suite includes Heidi AI, Heron AI, the Well Patient Portal, Copilot and Claude. 

He told attendees the centre started by asking staff about the points of friction that stop the practice from delivering ideal care. The response targets clinical administration, after-hours access, telephone demand, and broader practice management. 

"We could not find a single product that would do the whole thing for us, so we have put together a suite of products which we are now calling the Broadway Intelligence Suite," said Hill. 

The first problem they tackled was clinical administrative burden, which Hill said meant clinicians were finishing notes, completing referrals and managing prescriptions and patient queries well outside normal working hours. 

Broadway introduced Heidi AI as an ambient scribe across the practice, supported by 15 practice-built templates such as a specialist referral template. 

He said a radiology referral template was built to suit community-referred radiology guidelines and the clinic has had no referrals declined since introducing it.  

The practice also replaced its patient portal with the Centrik Well portal to help with after-hours access. This allows patients to book appointments around the clock, order and pay for prescriptions, receive results and view their medical notes. 

He said the migration was straightforward with 1,000 patients onboarded in a day without a single phone call to the practice and three months in, 3,500 patients are onboarded. 

Another challenge was managing telephone demand, particularly during surge times like before work and lunchtime, when staff are either unavailable or stretched. 

The practice introduced an AI-powered receptionist from Heron AI, which means when a patient calls, they can choose to wait for a staff member or enter the AI answering service.  

If they choose AI, the call is transcribed and summarised, and that summary is placed on a workflow board which reception staff can work through during quieter periods. 

The practice handles 5,000 calls per month, with five percent managed through Heron.  

The practice also uses Claude and Copilot across the entire team for tasks including drafting emails, writing policy, analysing budgets, taking meeting minutes, budget preparation and financial modelling. 

“That is the power of what we can do if we introduce these tools across our practices,” Hill said. 

"We have a lot of work to do and we are not perfect, but this is our approach to the problem.” 

Image: Doug Hill, practice owner at Broadway Medical Centre, speking at HiNZ’s Southern Connections event in Dunedin on July 29

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Pharmac is using one-off funding from Budget 2025 to develop a two-year data and digital programme aimed at enhancing core functions, improving decision-making, and strengthening collaboration and transparency across the health system. 

A Letter of Expectations progress update released on August 13, says a key project is the redevelopment of the Pharmaceutical Schedule - the document that lists all medicines and related products funded by Pharmac in New Zealand.

The project will replace legacy Schedule applications with a modern, centralised database that integrates with other systems both internally and externally. The update describes the redevelopment as the most significant change to the Schedule in 30 years.

The Letter sets out the Government's priorities for Pharmac each year and includes the expectation that Pharmac invest in data and digital infrastructure to enhance core functions and improve decision-making, collaboration, and transparency. 

As part of this work, Pharmac has agreed a joint project plan with Health New Zealand to align delivery of the new Schedule with a new Special Authority IT system that Health New Zealand is delivering. Both systems are scheduled to go live in late October 2027.

The Special Authority system manages the approval process for medicines that require authorisation before a patient can access them through the Pharmaceutical Schedule. The update says that aligning the two projects will ensure the systems work together effectively from the outset.

Pharmac is also progressing other digital initiatives under the programme including a new contract management system, and patient and supplier portals. The agency says it is working on improved application development tools to support better workflow, and is exploring opportunities for the use of artificial intelligence across its operations.

In September 2025, the Government announced changes to how hospital medical devices are procured, with Health New Zealand and Pharmac sharing responsibility under a joint operating model.
From February this year, Pharmac began delivering medical device health technology assessments as part of Health New Zealand's new Health Technology Evaluation Pathway.

The update says Pharmac's investment in digital infrastructure supports its work on medical devices and the agency’s focus for 2026/27 is continued delivery of the data and digital programme in partnership with Health New Zealand and other sector stakeholders. 

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Pinnacle PHO has launched a natural language data query tool called Ask Pinnacle that lets clinical and administrative staff interrogate aggregated health data by typing questions in natural language.

Pinnacle general manager of digital and innovation Garry Johnston says the new tool replaces the static dashboards and reports that primary health organisations regularly use to access population health insights.

Built on Snowflake, the platform is being piloted in two practices. Ask Pinnacle draws from multiple data sets such as; national enrolment data, prescribed and dispensed medicines information, clinical, administrative and financial data, and reference sets including PubMed.

"Everyone has a slightly different need in an organisation for data, and therefore what happens is their needs get expressed as reports that become seen as technical debt,” explains Johnston.

“In this new era, using AI, that need to have technical debt disappears because genuinely everyone can ask questions that are relevant to them in a way that makes sense to them."

He says Pinnacle's chief medical officer Jo Scott-Jones used Ask Pinnacle to explore whether there is a statistical correlation between three diseases prevalent in deprived communities, a question he had always wanted answered but would have been too costly and complex to request.

"Within five minutes it came back with an answer and it was categorically yes, there is absolutely a correlation and it is immutable,” Johnston tells eHealthNews.

He says findings such as this have the potential to change clinical practice by providing the data to back up what clinicians may have known anecdotally for years.

Pinnacle is running coaching sessions with pilot practices, sitting alongside staff and working through the questions they have always wanted to ask but never been able to pursue.

Johnston says the new approach is also changing how the organisation thinks about data quality. 

"The quality of the data is not as important as it used to be because the AI can provide context that a dashboard or a report cannot," he says.

"The more we look at the data, the more we explore it to find the origins of where the data is wrong, the more likely it is that people will code it correctly in the first place.”

Ask Pinnacle also introduces a governance capability that traditional dashboards lack, because it logs every query, so Pinnacle's digital team can now assess user intent - flagging questions that appear outside a user's role or that raise privacy concerns, he says.

Read more in Garry Johnston's My View - Why I'm done with Dashboards.

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Richard Hamblin 

Richard Hamblin has joined Health NZ | Te Whatu Ora from the Health Quality and Safety Commission, taking on the role of chief health insights officer.   This continues his career working in and around health services in New Zealand, the UK and the US using data to understand the functioning and quality of health systems.   

His work at HQSC included development of all the Commission’s measurement products including Quality and Safety Markers, the Atlas of Healthcare Variation, Quality Alerts and Patient Experience Surveys.

Before HQSC, Richard spent 20 years working in and around the NHS in England, including senior roles at the Care Quality Commission and the King’s Fund. He is internationally recognised for his work using data to improve health services and is a 2006–07 Harkness Fellow and a 2018 Leadership Development Centre Fellow.

Will Reedy

Will Reedy has been appointed chief executive at Medtech Global. Most recently CEO of Spark Health and a senior leader in Accenture’s Global Health Team, Reedy is passionate about the role of technology in reimagining healthcare. 

His immediate focus in the new role will be on accelerating adoption of Medtech AI and Medtech Connect, strengthening relationships with customers across New Zealand and Australia, and driving continued growth across the region.

“The convergence of workforce pressures, financial sustainability challenges, growing patient expectations and technologies like AI are driving an ever-increasing need for a Connected Care Ecosystem. MedWech Global has a significant role to play in this ecosystem now and in the future,” he says.

Andrew Cooper

Andrew Cooper has stepped into the role of group manager of digital delivery enablement and PMO at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.

An experienced PMO leader, lecturer, and academic author, Cooper brings extensive expertise in public sector infrastructure, enterprise transformation, and digital innovation. With a strong interest in the practical application of emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, he is focused on helping organisations realise greater value through modern ways of working and data-driven decision-making.

In this role, Cooper will oversee portfolio management, project execution, delivery enablement, and a focus on the advancement of AI and digital capabilities. His leadership will support critical improvements across Aotearoa’s public health technology ecosystem.

Rowhan Kelly

Rowhan Kelly has joined Nurse Maude's executive team as general manager – service development, bringing more than 20 years’ experience across healthcare, digital health, customer experience, product and service transformation in New Zealand and Australia. 

Most recently general manager, customer & innovation at Ryman Healthcare, Kelly has a strong focus on designing services around the needs of people and communities. 

In her new role, she will help shape the next generation of community care for Nurse Maude, building on its 130-year legacy by connecting services more effectively, improving access and co-creating more meaningful experiences with the people and whānau it serves.

Scott Arrol

Scott Arrol has been appointed general manager corporate services at Rotorua Area Primary Health Services (RAPHS).

Arrol was previously interim chief executive of HiNZ and has also served as chief executive of Motor Neurone Disease NZ and Dementia NZ. He is an executive committee member of the NZ Telehealth Forum and a trustee of the Health Navigator Charitable Trust.

He says it is a privilege to be working at RAPHS on a six-month contract to support the “excellent providers of primary healthcare across Rotorua, Murupara and Mangakino”. 

His role is to provide leadership support to the organisation and assist the hardworking and passionate team in their mission to enable high-quality health and wellbeing for the community by supporting primary care services, Arrol says.

Andrew Ingersoll

Andrew Ingersoll has been appointed as a clinical informatics director at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora. Bringing over 20 years of international health sector experience, he previously served as an associate director at PwC New Zealand where he supported the public sector with large scale digital transformation and responsible AI enablement. 

A former chief nursing information officer, benefits manager, and clinical safety specialist, Ingersoll brings extensive expertise in digital health transformation, clinical governance, and responsible artificial intelligence integration. His appointment strengthens Health NZ’s clinical leadership capability as the organisation advances its national data, digital strategy, and human-centred initiatives.

Justin Gray

Justin Gray has been appointed as a Partner in PwC New Zealand’s Advisory practice, focused on helping clients unlock the opportunities created by AI, technology, and business transformation. He is passionate about the role emerging technologies, including AI, can play in reshaping business and government. 

Gray brings deep experience in leading large-scale technology organisations and delivering complex transformation programmes across government and enterprise.

Most recently, he was managing director of Datacom New Zealand, where he led the country’s largest technology services business and worked with CEOs, CIOs, and senior leaders across the public and private sectors.

Will Fearnley

Will Fearnley has joined iMedX Australia & New Zealand, which provides AI-enabled clinical documentation, clinical coding and health information management solutions, as its New Zealand account manager. 

A registered nurse and member of Nurse Executives Aotearoa, he worked in emergency and critical care in the UK and New Zealand, then quality improvement and patient safety at Masterton Hospital. 

Fearnley later co-developed an AI solution with Health NZ’s Intelligent Automation team and National Artificial Intelligence and Algorithm Expert Advisory Group to identify hospital acquired complications and treatment injury. 

He says better clinical documentation and health information ultimately means safer care and improved patient outcomes.

James Oughton

James Oughton has joined BioOra as VP clinical development & medical affairs. BioOra is a Wellington-based biotech developing a CAR-T cell therapy alongside the Malaghan Institute. 

Oughton is building a new function to deliver medical education, establish clinical operations, and partner with stakeholders across the health system to bring CAR-T cell therapy to patients in New Zealand. 

Before BioOra, he was chief advisor, precision health at the Ministry of Health. Oughton says he is driven by getting cost-effective innovative technology to patients who need it.

Alistair Young

After eight years working at the cutting edge of AI and cardiovascular data analytics at King’s College London, Alistair Young is returning to the University of Auckland.

His new role, Professor of Intelligent Bioimaging, is a joint position between the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI) and the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.

Young helped develop AI algorithms capable of analysing hundreds of thousands of heart scans from the UK Biobank. He will combine these AI techniques developed in London with ABI's internationally recognised expertise in computational modelling and ultrasound imaging.

"There's a really exciting momentum that Auckland has got going with their imaging initiative. The work they're doing is cutting edge," he says.

Images (from first to last): Richard Hamblin; Will Reedy; Andrew Cooper; Rowhan Kelly; Scott Arrol; Andrew Ingersoll; Justin Gray; Will Fearnley; James Oughton; Alistair Young

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