HINZ

Papers in the march edition of HCIRO has been oublished online at :http://www.hinz.org.nz/journal

Innovation and Openness - Is There Room for Both?

This paper is based on the HINZ 2010 presentation and coauthored by Werner Van Huffel from Microsoft.

Sometimes when reading material on the screen, congratulations can come off as being rather unnatural and forced, so sorry if this reads like that – it is sincere ! Anyway I have to say a very big thank-you to all the people who made HINZ 2009 a success, Linda and her team of course, the people who came and listened, the people who presented and especially the SPC. It’s a little bit odd being on the programme committee - you’ve pretty much finished your work by the time the conference comes around and you don’t always get to see the papers you reviewed being presented.

Joanna points out the emphasis on effectiveness in healthcare and the apparent paradox in our lack of measurement of effectiveness of information systems in hospitals. Her research team took four questions about effectiveness and applied innovative research approaches to find out more. Is care delivery really more efficient if we use order entry for tests? If you use ‘test turnaround times’ as a measure, then yes it is more efficient – the times are shorter even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Jo reframed the concept of ‘person centred care’ for us by emphasizing the difference between what providers think is person centric and what a person thinks it is, especially regarding the goals of behavior changes, adherence to treatments, and self management. She introduced Chris Hendry who presented the midwifery health record, describing how it is shared with mothers and what mothers do with it. The record is ‘…gifted to the mother who decorates the cover with photos and in turn gives it to the child one day.’

Helen presented the models of genetic testing services in NZ and how a variety o models involving counsellors, GPs, testing labs and sharing of results. Many times GPs send patients or patients themselves go to testing labs. The test reports are shared with patient but may or may not be shared with GPs and genetic counsellors, which raises a lot of ethical issues that are not always addressed. It is about risk of disease, involvement of family or community members, cost benefits of testing as well as the clinical validity of test results.

Ken reminded us of the old days about ten years ago when everything was done manually. He challenged us that ‘few PHOs or DHBs know whether they population health goals are being met.’ For him achieving population health goals (and agreeing on them and being clear about what they are) should be the core goals of primary care. It should matter to primary care physicians and should be easy to do. He went on to tell us about the experience of Northland and Wanganui.

Dr Dana Thomas gave a talk on Collaborative Software Design - the benefits of customer and vendor working together. Collaborative software design is especially useful when there is a large cultural difference between two groups as there is between healthcare providers and IT companies. A challenge for the collaborative effort is to translate the requirements between the user, the design team and the development team.

Do you read the HINZ Journal? If not you should! It's an online journal that publishes great articles every quarter. There is now another reason to submit an article to the journal -  the Ministry of Health is sponsoring two award programmes. More information will be available on the HINZ website shortly. So if you have news, opinions, research, meeting reviews or case studies that you would like to publish, please submit them to the HINZ journal Health ICare Informatics Review Online, and you could be eligible for an award.

Brent started by telling us about the pressures caused by long term condition management and associated complexity, poor population health and the implications of our ageing population. The emphasis on new models of care with a seamless patient journey closer to home, means that care is increasingly provided across service boundaries. Nurses have a key role in co-ordinating and communicating care and have potential for impact on new models of care.

Denise started her presentation with a personal anecdote about a mistake made by a nurse when her brother was a baby when he was accidentally given an adult dose of a muscle relaxant.
She then talked about data quality in the UK and the effects of poor data quality in health. She says symptoms include low confidence in relying on the data, impaired decision making, increase risk of adverse avents, additional cost to resolve and lost funding/revenue.