Northern DHBs collaborate on health IT

Thursday 27 September

HealthAlliance has gone to tender for a regional collaborative community care solution as part of the new strategic direction of the Northern region DHBs.

The tender is on behalf of the four Northern DHBs – Auckland, Northland, Waitemata and Counties Manukau - but the chosen system could also be used by community care organisations and general practices.

The tender documents say the region is seeking a, “technology solution (and associated services) that will support the delivery of healthcare services in a way that enables easy, collaborative, and auditable sharing of patient related information across and between healthcare providers and healthcare service consumers in the region”.

“The DHBs’ strategic goal is that the selected solution will support the provision of patient-centred primary-, community- and hospital-based care as close as possible to the home and emphasises prevention (including self-care, health promotion), consumer participation and consumer autonomy. The solution will also be able to support future models of care as these are developed over time.”

The new system will be implemented first at Northland DHB to replace Jade Community Care, which will no longer be supported from 2020.

The procurement of a collaborative community care system signals a more regional and cohesive approach to IT in the region.

“Our current technology landscape has evolved in a piecemeal manner, driven by legacy systems as Northern Region DHBs have ‘contributed’ their separate IT systems, funding realities and DHB-specific prioritisation rather than by a coherent regional plan,” one of the tender documents says.

“The legacy of decades of underfunding is a significant level of ‘technical debt’ and a complex and an increasingly-unsupportable applications landscape.”

The region has developed a 10-year IT strategy, the regional Information Systems Strategic Plan, to guide its future ICT investments and a Roadmap for delivery.

The ISSP has four key focus areas; building strong foundations; simplifying, rationalising and harmonising the complex applications landscape; becoming expert at data sharing and interoperability; and becoming a capable Region.

The tender documents say the region’s track record of siloed investment and implementations means there are around 110 applications instances in use and funding limitations mean most
“are not maintained at near the latest version”.

The region also has four ‘burning platform’ community care applications.

HealthAlliance says the region’s future direction is transformative.
“We are looking for innovation and positive partnering that will bring fresh thinking and futureproofed investment suggestions,” the tender says.

Ends

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