National Information Clinical Leadership Group November Update

NICLG (pronounced "Nickle") is made up of members from a variety of professional bodies and colleges providing leadership and support for clinicians in New Zealand. It contributes clinical leadership to the National Health IT Plan and has input into a range of clinical process and information solutions.

November 2011 NICLG Meeting

NICLG met on 1 November, in Wellington. The meeting was held in tandem with the fourth in the series of Partnership Summits, which aim to build collaboration between health care decision makers, clinical leaders and the health ICT industry.

All attendees came together at the beginning of the day for an introduction to the Partnership Summit from the National Health IT Board (NHITB), NICLG and the New Zealand Health IT Cluster (NZICT).

NZICT presented a DVD highlighting the patient's journey through the health system, using creative ideas for improving IT innovation to support clinicians and patients.

Representatives from the two groups came together again at the end of the day for updates on their respective meetings.

Vendors, clinicians and consumers said they were keen to become involved and engaged in projects much earlier.

The NICLG meeting included presentations on:

• E-Plunket (PDF,1.245MB), from Plunket
• The Health Identity Project (PDF,391KB), from the NHITB
• National Transfer of Care eDischarge Project (PDF, 1.18MB), from Patients First
• Global Trigger Tool article 2011, Assessment of Risk Tool (ART)(PDF,754KB), from the NHITB
• National Implementation of Surgical Prioritisation (PDF,1.6MB) responding to the report of the Office of the Auditor General, from the National Health Board
• Towards a national clinician-led Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) and secondary prevention quality improvement system (PDF,1.45MB) , from the National Cardiac Network
• Report on the NHITB 2011/12 priorities and future plans (PDF, 61B), from the NHITB.

Three presentations are summarised below, and you can click the links above to access all presentations.

E-Plunket

Plunket is undertaking the roll-out of a new Primary Client Information system that will enable information to be more efficiently collected and shared. The aim is to have one client record across Plunket, and the ability to access the records of every child.

The vision is that the new system will: 

• improve health outcomes for families
• free-up staff to allow more time to care
• work in partnership with parents, with the focus on child and family.

A provider has been selected to develop the system - Intrahealth, and design is underway. It will be piloted mid-2012, and the staged and phased roll-out is aimed to be completed by end of 2013.

Health Identity Programme (NHITB)

The Health Identity Programme (HIP) (PDF,651KB) will upgrade the technology underpinning New Zealand's health identity system. The programme will provide the platform that makes the right health care information available when and where it is needed and supports the secure and efficient delivery of health care services in New Zealand.

It will replace obsolete technology supporting the National Health Index (NHI) and Health Practitioner Index (HPI) and will enable systems to 'talk' to each other.

The technology upgrade will improve access for health providers who use the indexes. Patients may indirectly benefit but won't notice any immediate changes. Importantly, existing NHI and HPI numbers will remain the same. 

The upgrade is taking place gradually over 15 months, to minimise disruption for users. Various components will be released and tested with 'early adopters' before being offered to the wider sector. The old and new systems will run concurrently before the old system is switched off.

GPs, hospitals and other health providers, in partnership with their IT suppliers, will need to update their IT systems to take advantage of the improvements.  The data held in both the NHI and HPI systems won't change and index numbers will stay the same.

Towards a national clinician-led ACS and secondary prevention quality improvement system (National Cardiac Network)

People with ischaemic heart disease typically present to hospital with a heart attack or unstable angina. The umbrella term for these conditions is Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS). Lifesaving care is complex and expensive and includes investigation with cardiac catheterisation, followed by treatment with either percutaneous coronary intervention or coronary artery bypass grafting.

Routinely collecting and reporting the clinical, investigation and treatment data used in local quality improvement processes will standardise practice, reduce disparity, and ensure the right treatment reaches the right people at the right time.

Workstream session

In the afternoon, NICLG members broke into four work streams, with each looking in more detail at one of the following areas:

• Transfer of Care
• eReferrals
• Shared Care
• eMedicines Management.

 Each workstream is responsible for providing advice and taking an active role in guiding the sector in implementation.

eReferrals Collaboration Workshop

On 31 October, the day before the NICLG meeting, a small workshop was held on eReferrals. It focused on the importance of eReferrals, IT Board eReferrals initiatives, and the role of eReferrals across the continuum of care, electronic care and shared care environment.

Northland, Hutt, Canterbury and Auckland DHBs presented their eReferrals learnings, discussed where the gaps were, and their future plans.

The day was extremely useful in clarifying areas in which people could work together, and at least one regional alliance was formed.

Two NICLG members attended the eReferrals workshop. They found this attendance extremely helpful in terms of the input they were able to have to the eReferrals workstream at the NICLG meeting the following day. 

Emergency Department IT Workshop

A workshop focusing on emergency department IT was held in Wellington on 2 November.  National Health IT Board members, ED specialists and vendor representatives attended the meeting.  

Highlights and items of note included:  

• the agreed National ED Workflow (PDF, 45KB)
• viewing Hutt Valley and Counties Manukau DHB's ED IT systems (iSoft and Orion solutions respectively) enabled workshop participants to go through the patient's journey with real patients
• hearing a Wellington Free Ambulance representative talking about the barriers and challenges to getting patient information
• Dr Keith Joe describing his experiences implementing new ED systems in Melbourne - IT & the Patient Journey Thru ED powerpoint presentation (PDF,4.84MB)
• holding discussions with vendors ISoft, Orion and MedTech
• discussing standards and SNOMED, which were all agreed to
• building closer links with Dr Peter Jones and the Shorter Stay ED research project (PDF,180KB).

We discussed how the groups could work together to enable integrated health care, and improve the quality and prioritisation of the design of IT solutions for ED.

IN BRIEF

• The key points from the 1 November meeting are here in a powerpoint format (482KB).
• Read the minutes from the November NICLG meeting (58.7).
• Don't forget the Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ) conference is on in Auckland from Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 November. The conference has been an annual highlight for the health information technology community for almost a decade. Keynote speakers include Dr David Blumenthal, until recently President Obama's National Co-ordinator for health IT, and Andrew Howard, the Australian National e-Health Transition Agency's Chief Architect. For more information, see www.hinz.org.nz.

Next meeting

The next NICLG meeting will be held in February 2012.