NGAIO CROOK, CIO at Taranaki District Health Board, says the telehealth services will be the topmost project of the ICT department this year.

She says the introduction of a high quality videoconferencing solution in the past year will have a major impact in specialist medicine.

“The deployment will enable our clinicians to have virtual consultations with patients and other DHBs, as well as strengthen the connections and collaboration of the health professionals at lower costs and reduce risks for the patients,” says Crook.

The 38-member ICT team at the DHB will work on exciting projects this year, she says, which include rollouts of technologies like voice recognition and deployment of forms and workf low on mobile devices.

The DHB, one of 21 across the country, serves a population of 104,280 people, or 2.8 per cent of New Zealand’s population. The ICT team supports 2500 screens, of which around 500 are BYOD.

Crook says initiatives that will drive the most ICT investments this year are big data/business intelligence and analytics, mobile technologies, cloud services, security/risk management technologies, and videoconferencing/telepresence.

She says some of the challenges the team will face in upcoming months are managing competing demands and priorities and working within budget constraints.