What role does the digital and healthtech industry sector play as part of the wider health reform

Recently, Te Whatu Ora took a significant step to connect New Zealand healthcare's multiple data environments into one common national platform (NDP) for data management, and sharing for reporting and analytics.This phase of change aims to achieve nationally planned and coordinated consistency, to empower regional implementation and integration, and to enable locally tailored delivery of care. From a whole of system perspective, we are working towards flat structures over time, with minimal layers.

A recent study, conducted for InterSystems, found healthcare organisations across New Zealand and Australia are struggling to harness data and analytics to improve clinical and patient outcomes due to the inability to bring together and analyse data across multiple sources, and give access to seamless, real-time, actionable insights. The establishment of a national data platform is a crucial enabler in the context of the health system reforms and forms part of a suite of related initiatives already underway on matters of data governance, data standards, and identity and access management. 

One current challenge in healthcare delivery is the unequal distribution of healthcare resources, leading to disparities in access and quality of care. Unifying the system can help address this challenge by providing a single system that ensures equal access to healthcare services for all individuals, regardless of their socioeconomic status or geographic location. Another challenge is the fragmentation of healthcare services, where patients often receive care from multiple providers without proper coordination. A unified approach can tackle this issue by integrating various healthcare providers into a single network.

Care models combining physical and digital elements have become increasingly commonplace in New Zealand, after more than a year and a half of the pandemic progressively normalising virtual care, especially in the chronically underfunded primary care sector. Looking at the wider sector, digital health is innovating fast, and the landscape continues to evolve with some companies falling by the wayside. With rapid change comes numerous new point solutions that solve one specific problem but are low on scalability and interoperability. This is a hallmark trait of a growing market. This abundance of point solutions adds to the current challenges of a fragmented digital health industry, impacting care delivery from health systems to employer-sponsored benefits. Even if a point solution works, it can struggle to scale from a workflow or security perspective.

The Pae Ora Healthy Futures Strategies that sets the direction for a system that is equitable, accessible, cohesive and people-centred notes the need for a single health system and greater use of digital services. That’s an issue that has long plagued the New Zealand health IT landscape.

Ultimately, going forward, what role will industry play going forward? 

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