Achieving the eHealth vision November / December 2014
In this issue...
Director's Editorial
Clinician's Corner
Funding support for patient portals
Clinicians' Challenge finalists announced
Telehealth enhances rural healthcare
Teledermatology making a difference in Waikato
Telehealth helping treat communicable disease
interRAI assessments help residents and families
Australasian Long term Conditions Conference
NZePS processes five million ePrescriptions
New Zealand Formulary's new website
Child health information pilot begins
500,000 eReferrals in Midland
Electronic Prescribing and Administration rollout
Health literacy
Events – HINZ
Whānau Ora trials information sharing system
Electronic Records and Privacy Act
South Island's shared clinical workstation
Law change brings electronic prescriptions
Graeme Osborne
Director's Editorial

Welcome to this issue of the National Health IT Board's newsletter. Our newsletter has been refreshed so we can bring you more news about eHealth initiatives in the health and disability sector.

A recent report by Patients First predicts that within five to 10 years patient portals will be as much a part of day-to-day life for a significant proportion of the population as internet banking and online airline bookings are today.

The nationwide rollout of patient portals by GPs is a priority for the Board. I’m therefore pleased to advise that the Minister of Health announced early last month $3 million in funding to give practical support to general practices as they introduce portals.

We are working with interested groups to identify ways of using this funding that will be of most benefit to consumers, GPs and PHOs. The money is targeted at two key areas: supporting GP uptake via their PHOs, and a consumer campaign to lift awareness.

More than 35,000 patients in over 80 general practices already use this service provided by their GPs, and many more practices are in the planning stages of introducing a portal.

Read more
Funding support for patient portals

The Ministry of Health has announced $3 million in funding to support a rollout of patient portals by general practices. A patient portal is a secure online site provided by GPs so their patients can access their personal health information and manage aspects of their health care.

Read more
Clinicians' Challenge finalists announced

The three finalists for the Clinicians’ Challenge 2014 have now been announced. This year’s Clinicians’ Challenge attracted more entries than ever before, and judges say the entries were of a particularly high standard.

Read more
Telehealth enhances rural healthcare

Opotiki GP and Chair of the Rural GP Network, Dr Jo Scott-Jones believes that telehealth can radically improve the way rural GPs care for their patients by offering them new services closer to home.

Read more
Teledermatology making a difference in Waikato region

Waikato DHB dematology team led by Dr Amanda Oakley are using teledermatology, to support patients and their health professionals in rural communities link into specialist services.

Read more
Telehealth helping treat communicable disease

Auckland's Regional Public Health Service have developed a new teleDOT health service to treat patients with TB.

Read more
interRAI assessments help residents and families

By the end of August 2014, 125,915 standardised assessments of older people had been performed in New Zealand. All residential aged-care facilities have signed up to receive interRAI training.

Using the comprehensive clinical (interRAI) assessment of medical, rehabilitation and support needs and abilities enabled a family and a rest home care manager to work together for the benefit of a very special dementia patient and mum. Read more

Read other ehealth case studies
Australasian Long term Conditions Conference

Health, the art of the possible was the theme for this year’s Australiasian Long term Conditions Conference held in late July. Conference presentations were about the importance of integrated care and how shared electronic health records can help and how the innovative use of technology was being used to support people with long term conditions.

National Health IT Board Director Graeme Osborne spoke about adapting health systems to meet consumer needs. ehealth Ambassadors Dr Sue Wells and Dr Karl Cole spoke about patient portals.

Telehealth practitioners Dr Jo Scott Jones and Ernie Newman talked about the initiatives in the Bay of Plenty. Telehealth Forum member Dr Robyn Whitaker also presented on mobile Health moving from location-centric to anywhere anytime care.

View these and other presentations on the Health Navigator website.
NZePS processes five million ePrescriptions

The national rollout of GPs, and other prescribers, allowing to send electronic prescriptions to community pharmacies is going well. More than five million prescriptions have been processed electronically since the New Zealand ePrescription Service (NZePS) was introduced in July 2013.

The four GP Patient Management System (PMS) vendors and two community pharmacy vendors are deploying NZePS's capability to their customer sites over the next few months. Further prescribing systems will be added in the next 12 months including inpatient discharge, outpatients, aged care, specialist etc.

Read NZePS background info
New Zealand Formulary's new website

A user friendly website has been developed by the New Zealand Formulary (NZF) which provides point-of-care advice for all health professionals on the prescription medicines in New Zealand.

View the website
Child health information pilot begins

The National Child Health Information Platform (NCHIP) has been established to ensure that all NZ children, from birth to 18 years, receive timely key health milestone and that "no child is left behind."

The National Health IT Board is working with the Midlands Health Network and the Waikato DHB on a six month pilot programme. The final pilot solution will be rolled out to Lakes, Taranaki and Tairawhiti DHBs in 2015. A national rollout is intended to follow in 2016.

Read more

Midlands Health Network CEO John Macaskill-Smith spoke about the National Child Health Information Platform (NCHIP) on Radio New Zealand on 23 July 2014.

Listen to this
500,000 eReferrals in Midland

More than half a million electronic referrals (eReferrals) have been sent between general practices, community specialists, and hospitals in the Midland region, since June 2010.

The eReferral system allows for the electronic transfer of information between primary, community and secondary health care providers, giving real-time updates to all involved on how the eReferral is being managed. By making this administrative task easier, GP have more time to spend with patients.

Clinician’s Corner
Dr Sadhana Maraj
It was inspiring this month to hear that Dr Lance O’Sullivan, a Northland GP and New Zealander of the Year for 2014, had chosen telehealth as the subject of a keynote address he gave at Waikato University for Kingitanga Day.

Dr O'Sullivan uses telehealth to deliver services from his practice in Kaitaia to Te Hapua, the most northerly settlement in New Zealand.

He was reported as saying the system overcame the challenges of distance, was more convenient and gave people living in remote areas greater control of their own health.

A new report from the NZ Telehealth Forum shows the introduction of telehealth is close to a tipping point, with all DHBs using telehealth technologies to some degree over the past three to four years.

I’m encouraged to see the growing use of telehealth, which is one of the enabling technologies that will form the foundation of the changes we need to make to deliver health care to New Zealanders.

Read more
Event
Health Informatics NZ
(HINZ) 2014 Conference
And Exhibition

Date: 10-12 November 2014


Routes to transformational change read more...

Whānau Ora trials information sharing system

The trialling of a new national information sharing system for Whānau Ora is now underway. Four Whānau Ora sites are trialling the new system that will eventually be available to all Whānau Ora providers and collectives. Eventually, whanau will be able to access their own data via a portal. Whānau Ora is a key cross-government approach that places whānau at the centre of service delivery. The trial ends in December 2014.

Electronic Records and the Privacy Act

Under the Privacy Act, people have the right to ask for access to their health information. Electronic health records make this access easier but also mean that more patients will wish to see their records, in order to be better informed about their health conditions. All access to electronic patient records is traceable and consumers can request information on who has looked at their information.

The Privacy Commissioner's website has further information about this.
Read more

South Island's shared clinical workstation

Health Connect South, the South Island-wide clinical workstation, will be rolling out to the final two South Island DHBs, Southern and Nelson Marlborough, in the coming year. This clinically-led initiative will provide simple, straightforward and secure access to a single repository for clinical records.

Law change brings electronic prescriptions

Recent changes to the Medicines Amendment Act 2013 and Misuse of Drugs Amendment Regulations 2014 came into effect, from 1 July 2014.

These amendments, among other changes, allow nurse practitioners and optometrists to be authorised prescribers, change the definition of medicines and medical devices and allow for controlled drug prescriptions to be generated electronically.

Read more


Electronic Prescribing and Administration rollout

Electronic Prescribing and Administration (ePA) which supports the safe, effective and appropriate use of medicines has being implemented in Waitemata, Taranaki and Southern DHB hospitals for some time. Implementation at new sites required a number of important system fixes and enhancements which have now happened. Canterbury DHB went live in September and Auckland DHB is currently undertaking implementation planning.

Canterbury DHB is also leading work to test ePA linkages with the New Zealand Universal List of Medicines and the New Zealand Formulary. Canterbury DHB is the first DHB to put a DHB-wide prescribing waiver in place, rather than the incremental ward-by-ward approach previously taken.

Work is underway to integrate the NZ Universal List of Medicines (NZULM) and NZ Formulary (NZF) in the MedChart ePA system. The Ministry is now transitioning Waitemata, Taranaki and Southern DHBs to the national contract.


Health literacy

From a health care perspective, health literacy is about ensuring people can interact well with health professionals and the health system and are supported to make informed choices about their health and lifestyle.

International research shows poor health literacy is associated with greater risk of poor health, and with increased health service expenditure.

The Ministry of Health has had a health literacy improvement work programme which has recently produced research on palliative care and Maori, the prevention and management of skin infection and the prevention and early detection of gout.

Where can I find health information?

On the Ministry of Health website is a useful directory for data sources commonly used when analysing the health of New Zealand populations.

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