Cameron Brill took on the CIO role at St John eight months ago and has been leading the ICT and Digital strategy to enable the Integrated Business Plan focused on improving health for New Zealanders.

St John has 14,000 employees and over 17,600 personnel so requires a multi-modal ICT team to deliver on a critical 24x7 business, plus a strong customer and digital vision, says Brill, who leads a team of 70.

He explains their programmes cover four themes.

Innovate: “We will build cross functional partnerships to manage the innovation pipeline of ideas, initiatives and projects.”

Integrate: “We will integrate (where appropriate) with both internal - and external - health and emergency services stakeholders.”

Infrastructure: “We will continue a focus on robust, secure, and economic infrastructure.”

Information: “We will enable the right information, at the right time, in the right place.”

“We have created a strong emphasis on ‘what does success look like’ and are measuring success through numbers and type of innovative and digital projects,” says Brill. Operational, personnel and financial metrics are measured alongside this.

Another goal is to build digital and innovation teams working across commercial and ICT.

He lists some of the recent digital innovations considered and/or delivered by the team.

A ‘My StJohn’ customer-centric portal for all digital transactions with patients, customers, and supporters.

E-commerce solution providing one checkout, vouchers/gifts and new payment options.

Intelligent Ambulance allows sharing appropriate patient information with health organisations in real-time using tablets and APIs.

Using IoT to help enable healthy homes for the elderly e.g. medical alarms and other temperature/movement sensors.

An app allowing qualified public to respond to emergency incidents.

This will allow the “qualified public” to respond to emergency services such as alerts to a cardiac arrest, and highlight defibrillators within a 400 metre radius.

We have recently completed a "stabilisation" project focused on simplification and rationalisation, including a cloud strategy to move all non-critical infrastructure to the cloud. The next phase to PaaS should free up resource to focus on innovation, says Brill.

We are also developing our digital, security, and architectural skill set and capability as part of the ICT and Digital strategy. This is partly done through attrition and a focus on training within these skills, he adds.

He says the ICT and digital teams have recently completed several large projects that have had a major impact on operational excellence.

The ePRF or electronic patient record is a move away from paper for all ambulance patient information. It has allowed real-time sharing of information with the district health boards.

MDT or mobile data terminals provide electronic maps and incident information delivered immediately through to the ambulance.

The new CAD system involves moving three systems into one in all three control centres to manage 111 calls and ambulance dispatches. This has provided major improvements to our operations, says Brill.

Brill sits on the executive leadership team which meets an hour every week, and one day every month. We present strategic initiatives to the board relatively regularly, he says.

“We recently put in place cross functional digital teams, information governance, and data management teams focused on a programme of work and relative outcomes for the teams.”

Brill says they also run surveys and focus groups to capture feedback from both their internal and external customers.

“My team is forward thinking and diverse, but unified and connected in our action and delivery to our patients and our people.”

Rodney Fletcher