Clinicians, patients frustrated over fragmented data system

WELLINGTON: The Ministry of Health wants to change the way people's medical records are shared nationwide, amid growing frustration among IT health experts.

It has put a business case to Cabinet for millions of dollars to set up New Zealand's first national health information platform.

The country's hospital IT systems are so outdated, fragmented and insecure they need $2.3 billion spent on them over the next decade, according to official assessments.

Colin McKenzie, who helps run Epsom health diagnostics-handling firm Sysmex, which gets people's lab test results through to whichever clinicians need to see them, said it was a struggle.

‘‘If I'm from Hamilton and I get transferred to Auckland for specialist care, they can't see any of my information,’’ he said.

‘‘They'll ring up the other hospital or the region and ask: ‘fax through Colin's records if you have them, or attach them to an email'. That's really secure, isn't it?

‘‘We have great little silos of data that act regionally, but they're not shared nationally,’’ Mr McKenzie said.

It was not just clinicians being kept in the dark, but patients wanting to access their own data to stay healthy.

Health Ministry deputy directorgeneral of data and digital Shayne Hunter had been pulling together a business case for a datasharing platform he hoped would be a gamechanger.

It has gone to a Cabinet committee ahead of next month's Budget.

‘‘We do have some outdated and fragmented systems,’’ Mr Hunter said.

‘‘The way to join a map will be through the national health information platform.

‘‘It's a total priority for the ministry.’’

The proposed datasharing platform will cost several million dollars and take five years to build.

Industry insiders said if the Government did not approve this in the Budget 2021, frustrated IT companies might just do it themselves.

Malcolm Pollock has led health IT innovation for three decades, and was director of the National Institute for Health Innovation at the University of Auckland.

He released a report for the New Zealand Health IT industry group at Parliament on Wednesday.

He said New Zealand had been on a backward slide since the early 1990s and had missed previous chances to reverse it.

‘‘Why haven't we got a system which automatically [travels with you], as a matter of course, in the same way as your financial record from a bank travels around with you, why isn't that information travelling around with them?’’ Mr Pollock asked.

His report for NZHIT calls for a new network where local companies can bid for funding for key IT projects, and a new academy that educates nurses and doctors about IT. — RNZ