NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
This is a companion discussion topic for the original eHealth News article:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original eHealth News article:
This was an insightful article and positive to read. As a community midwifery operational manager who is using digital options to change the way we deliver services this was a refreshing confirmation that those leading digital transformation understand our operational context, constraints and our commitment. Our interest in digital transformation at a local level is to enable us to improve maternity health equity access to care and to attract and keep staff in a very challenging staffing environment. National transformations impact on our choices and enable us to improve the way we work. It is so true that doing the same thing “quicker” or differently is not transformation. It is also true that individual health managers and staff have to be very committed to the value of transformation of our services to summon the personal energy to keep pushing our local transformations while still keeping current services running in a setting of increasing demand and low staffing. Despite the challenges, we are striving to achieve service transformations, vital at a “micro” local service level, but clearly set and enabled within the context of macro organizational and policy changes and transformation now occurring throughout health.
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Thanks to Isabella Smart for a useful summary of the main issues facing our healthcare system “striving to achieve service transformations”. Thanks also to Patrick O’Doherty for outlining the system fundamentals “that we need to reimagine what the Health NZ system looks like”.
It seems that considerable effort is being made to improve the standardisation of system components so that the digital health ecosystem will provide the required levels of efficiency and user acceptance within the available healthcare budgets. I have limited user experience with digital ecosystems but have worked in electrical power systems for many years. There are similarities between health and power systems where increased standardisation goes a long way to achieving desired results at reduced cost. A proper Enterprise Architecture is fundamental for planning and operating large organisations. A macro, meso and micro process levels design approach is needed to get everyone on the same page. Other tools described in the TOGAF and BABOK guidelines would also be useful.
I am disappointed there are so few system diagrams available in the many topics covered by the eHealth Forum. It would be great to “see” how much progress is being made to achieving the overall objectives for improving our NZ healthcare system.
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