Health ministry changes tack on tech
The Ministry of Health has scrapped its advisory body on information technology issues amid comments from one hospital manager that district health boards were receiving ‘‘mixed messages’’ on priorities from different authorities.
The ministry’s acting chief technology officer, Giles Southwell, said the seven-year-old National Health IT Board had met for the last time and would be replaced by a new Digital Advisory Board, which will have its first meeting on August 12.
The restructure comes as the Government revives a lapsed flagship initiative to create a system of electronic health records that has been tipped to cost tens of millions of dollars.
Southwell said the Cabinet had asked the ministry to assess the options and benefits of the records, which would provide a single view of people’s health information.
Shayne Hunter, the chief information officer of Capital & Coast, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa DHBs, painted a candid picture of the reality ‘‘at the coalface’’ of health IT during a presentation to the ITx technology conference in Wellington this month.
The three DHBs had about 1200 software applications to maintain and were spending the bulk of their $33 million annual IT budget on ‘‘keeping the lights running’’, he said.
‘‘We have a range of organisations that we deal with at a national level; we have a range of organisations that we deal with from a regional perspective and then we have got our own local plans and strategies.
‘‘It would be fair to say we have got a lot of conflicting priorities – a lot of mixed messages – so trying to make sure we can keep things moving forward and respond to