Clinicians’ Challenge 2011

Clinicians' Challenge 2011 - We have our winners!

A Waitemata DHB intensive care specialist's proposal for a language interpreter system has won the 2011 Clinician's Challenge. 

Janet Liang, from North Shore Hospital, had the best clinical case in the challenge, and her award was announced at the recent HINZ conference in Auckland.

Clinicians entered the challenge by outlining a work-related problem that the innovative use of information technology could help solve. Health IT vendors were then asked to come up with a solution to the three cases chosen as finalists. There were 56 entries from clinicians this year.

The clinical case runners up were:

eNotifications of legally reportable conditions to Medical Officers of Health -- entered by a group of clinicians and presented by Nicholas Jones, a Public Health Physician at Hawke’s Bay District Health Board.

An electronic early warning scoring system to alert staff to patients who are deteriorating -- entered by Capital and Coast DHB Intensive Care Specialist Alex Psirides and presented by Nurse Specialist Anne Pedersen.

Healthlink, Kinross Group and Maxsys came up with the winning vendor concept, a solution to eNotify legally reportable conditions to Medical Officers of Health. (As the clinician cases and vendor responses are judged separately, the winners for each section do not necessarily match).

The vendor runners up were iSoft for the early warning scoring system. No vendor proposals were received for a language interpreter.

This year's Clinicians' Challenge prizes included international study and field trip opportunities.

The challenge is run by the National Health IT Board (NHITB), Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ), and the New Zealand Health IT Cluster. The Ministry of Science and Innovation also provided sponsorship towards the vendor prize.

The challenge aims to promote the use of information technology in health. We want to encourage more clinicians to become interested in technology, we want vendors further develop their understanding of clinical requirements and we want IT systems developed that help us to work smarter and improve patient outcomes.

For more information about the Clinician's Challenge, see the HINZ website.