Why New Zealand is easing the expansion of its ICT system
New Zealand’s new government aims to reduce the number of healthcare IT systems while expanding its capabilities in data and technology to meet new healthcare models.
These are some of the immediate priority actions that Te Whatu Ora outlined in their briefing to Health Minister Dr. Shane Reti, which was recently released to the public.
According to the public health agency, the healthcare system now has a “patchwork” of more than 4,000 clinical and business system applications – many of which have reached or are nearing end of life, with no effective backup. These are not only not integrated, but also vary in quality across 28 environments and mounting technical debt.
Te Whatu Ora said “significant” resources will be required to maintain legacy systems, especially legacy systems that contribute to “more severe and frequent service outages.”
Integrating these ‘fragmented’ systems will be hard work given the serious data gaps and limitations, on top of existing working practices that are ‘at risk of insecure data sharing and breaches’.
To this end, Te Whatu Ora said an immediate priority should be to “limit the proliferation of ICT systems” and move to “fewer, more robust platforms.”
The agency also plans to move local ICT systems to the cloud to “increase the resilience and availability of services” in a more cost-effective and secure way.
In cybersecurity, the agency aims to standardize and automate national data collection and build national data consistency to reduce the risk of breaches. Last year, Accenture was commissioned to… National Data Platform project, which will unify all information in the healthcare system. There are also plans to create similar nationally uniform patient information platforms for individuals, physicians and healthcare providers.
In addition, it wants to increase its ICT capabilities for new care models and further invest in “bringing care closer to home”.
THE GREATER CONTEXT
These immediate priorities were also emphasized in the meantime Te Pae Tata New Zealand Health Plan 2022 as part of actions to promote the uptake of digital tools and services. Other actions include the implementation of Hira, New Zealand’s national health information platform, as well as out-of-hours virtual services and telehealth – especially for rural areas.
Since 2021, almost a billion dollars have been invested by the government to strengthen youP the data and digital infrastructure and capabilities of the healthcare system. The Ministry of Health, in a separate briefing to Minister Reti, acknowledged that “more work” needs to be done so it can be more agile to adapt to technological advances and tackle growing digital risks.
“While parts of the workforce and parts of our system are rapidly adapting and innovating, our healthcare systems and institutions are not yet supporting us to take full advantage of new and emerging technologies,” the report said.
This is why the ministry wants to take advantage of the “exciting” opportunities that AI and genomics offer to improve the efficiency and costs of the healthcare system, while easing some of the pressures faced by healthcare workers and “enhancing the sustainability of healthcare delivery is improved over time. “Te Whatu Ora, for example, is now working on carrying out pilots AI-enabled clinical coding for hospital admissions, which is expected to improve the speed and accuracy of care delivery.
The Ministry of Health also highlighted the potential of AI and genomics to increase access to targeted healthcare services and enable early disease detection and management.