Describe your career to date and how that led you to be a Fellow of HiNZ?
I moved into health informatics from senior nursing roles as IT came into the health sector and a realised clinicians needed to be involved. I was an inaugural member of the first clinical informatics group, Nursing Informatics NZ (NINZ). As chair, I initiated the merger of NINZ with NZ Health Informatics Foundation to form Health Informatics NZ (HINZ). For services to informatics, I was made an Honorary member of HINZ.

As the NZ representative to International Medical Informatics Association Nursing Informatics (IMIA NI), I served on the board as Vice Chairs and Chairperson. I was award Honorary member of IMIA NI and I was elected as a founding Fellow of both the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics and later HINZ.

What does being a Founding Fellow mean to you?
I am very honoured to have been appointed a founding Fellow of HINZ. I have been privileged to work with so many wonderful and passionate people over more than thirty years, in the national and international informatics and digital health arenas. This was a pioneering era as we collaboratively established and forged a path in this new health discipline. The time and commitment by so many of the early people was all voluntary but it is so great to see that it is now a recognised field. I acknowledge and thank so many of my FHINZ colleagues for all you have done for me and others and the discipline.

What is your advice to other digital health specialists who are thinking of nominating themselves or others?
We all play different roles in the digital health ecosystem, but all are equally important. Take time to reflect on all the skills that you have, the ways that you use these skills, the networks you collaborate with and recognise that you are making your own unique contribution to our health ecosystem through the role you play in data and digital health. Collaborate, network, find a mentor and be a mentor to others. Never stop learning.

What is your favourite piece of technology at home and why?
The infrastructure of network, servers and the broadband connection that allows me to connect so many of my devices and applications. This infrastructure allows me to communicate with family, friends and colleagues, supports remote working, access to information, collaboration spaces and e-commerce. Infrastructure such as this will be fundamental to supporting us as we age, and we often do not realise how important and how ubiquitous it is.



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Describe your career to date and how that led you to be a Fellow of HiNZ?
I got to play on my first computer at a friend's house when I was 10 and was hooked. This led to my career path in tech and for very personal reasons I also became passionate about health. Health is a complex system problem that I found intellectually stimulating. I was at Microsoft at the time and was asked to lead the health business for Asia. Digital and health is now all I know and I have made digital health my life work too.

What does being nominated and accepted as a Fellow mean to you?
It is a positive recognition of a journey well served doing what you are passionate about. In digital health and informatics, it is a small cohort of people that grow up together. It's an honour to be recognised by people who also spend their days arguing with computers, clinicians and trying to make health better. It's heartening to be part of a group that has health informatics tattooed on their hearts. The hard work continues though, because if we don't inspire the next generation, who will help us when we forget our passwords?

What is your advice to other digital health specialists who are thinking of nominating themselves or others?
Being a Fellow isn't just about having the right keyboard shortcuts. You need to have long-term dedication to healthcare's transformation—from electronic records to AI diagnostics. If you've been in the trenches, implemented or developed solutions that doctors/nurses/patients actually use (and understand!), and have an ongoing passion project like "How to Make Electronic Health Records as Addictive as Social Media"—you're ripe for nomination. In my mind, if you see digital health and informatics as your calling - apply.

What’s your favourite piece of technology at home and why?
There is so much tech here it's hard to have a favourite. My new Proxmox box is running all sorts of containers and VM's for home automation tasks such as irrigation, lighting, curtains, solar and media. It's my current pet project. Just simplifying life, reducing energy consumption and automating tasks I would have to do manually, is a lot of fun. It provides me new free time to do other geeky things and spend time with my family.


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Describe your career to date and how that led you to be a Fellow of HiNZ?
My digital health journey began when I emigrated to New Zealand from the UK 30 years ago and spent most of the 90s as the co-developer of a Practice Management System. This included work on our first HL7^® messaging solutions and clinical terminologies. Subsequently, I’ve contracted to suppliers of both primary and secondary care applications and various public sector organisations. Probably the most significant work I’ve done in recent years has been in developing and supporting interoperability components for national systems such as GP2GP and NZePS; plus, the provision of an HL7^® FHIR Server^® for community use. I’ve also had the privilege of holding several voluntary, elected, governance positions in standards development organisations – both locally and internationally.

What does being nominated and accepted as a Fellow mean to you?
Without wishing to appear churlish, in general I’m not a great advocate for individual awards in this field, particularly as my primary focus area is interoperability which is very much a collective endeavour. Naturally, it’s pleasing to be recognised by one’s peers, but I regard my Fellowship as a tribute to the Standards Community as a whole and HL7 New Zealand in particular. Every successful digital health project that I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of has been underpinned by the implementation of standards.

What is your advice to other digital health specialists who are thinking of nominating themselves or others?
Health informatics is the convergence of clinical and technical folk. As someone on the latter side of that cohort, I would encourage other implementers to be considered or self-nominate. Maybe, I’m a little over-sensitive on this topic, but I do feel that technicians are sometimes undervalued by clinical informaticians, and the HiNZ Fellowship Community should be place which facilitates a closer understanding between different digital health disciplines. Certainly, lack of either a medical or technical background shouldn’t be a barrier, although it’s useful to have one of those!

What’s your favourite piece of technology at home and why?
As I work predominantly from home, it would have to be our fibre broadband connection – my digital front door to the world beyond Hamilton! It’s also a technology with which I have a tenuous, but interesting association. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the pioneering work in creating fibre optics as a telecommunications medium was performed in the 1960s, by Sir Charles Kao at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories based in Harlow, Essex, England, literally on the other side of the fence to my school’s playing fields.


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Describe your career to date and how that led you to be a Fellow of HiNZ?
I am a registered nurse and midwife with a Master of management and a PhD in change management linked to health IT projects. I had already been working in informatics roles for 10 years before I started my PhD – design and implementation of software, using data for performance reports, and designing a decision support system. In the last 18 years I have been an academic and my research and teaching are applied, giving real world learning to other digital health specialists.

What does being nominated and accepted as a Fellow mean to you?
For me, it means that what I’ve done to make a career of digital health specialist work has been seen and acknowledged. Being part of this elite community that consists of heroes of digital health is a privilege and a responsibility – to take others with me on this path and make a difference. As a Fellow I am a role model to others like me. I show you that your contribution is valuable and valued. It means a lot to me to have cleared a path for others to follow. May your journey be as interesting and exciting as mine has been, and may it also be acknowledged.

What is your advice to other digital health specialists who are thinking of nominating themselves or others?
Take a long look at your CV and reflect on your career to date. Resist the urge to be self-deprecating (we New Zealanders do this a lot). Tell your story as it is. Ask for help to complete the forms – existing Fellows are available to mentor you. If you’re nominating someone, ask them to help you write their story. If you’re applying for yourself, you need nominators to sign off the form, so choose nominators who can mentor you as you complete the form (assuming they’re not already your mentors and also Fellows).

What’s your favourite piece of technology at home and why?
My tablet is my favourite tech. Its e-reader is my most precious app. I have an irrational fear of being caught in a queue or stuck in a lift without something to read. Before I got my tablet, I bought handbags big enough to hold a novel or anything else I was reading. Now it doesn’t matter. I have my tablet. An e-reader device is too small and doesn’t give me that special book-feel while I’m reading. It also enables me to do other things like drawing and note making. I wouldn’t be me without it!



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