Southern Alliance Information Group(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking: 58

Senior IS executive: Grant Taylor, regional CIO
Reports to: Regional CEO
Size of IS shop: 95

PCs: 2104
Mobile PCs: 210
Terminals: 498
Hand-held devices: 120
Total screens: 2932

Industry: Health and community services
PC environment: HP; Windows XP, Vista
Server environment: HP, IBM, AIX, Linux, Tru64 Unix, Windows 2003, Dell
DBMS: Oracle, SQL
Address: Dunedin Hospital, 201 Great King St, Dunedin
Websites: www.otagodhb.govt.nz, www.sdhb.govt.nz
Key IS projects this year: BI; new datacentre; virtualisation; Public Records Act compliance,

Under the Southern Alliance, the back-office functions of IT, finance, HR and planning and funding are now restructured and functioning as shared services for the Otago and Southland District Health Boards.

Regional CIO Grant Taylor says regionalising IT systems and making them highly available and robust, is a driving force for the Southern Alliance team in 2009.

Despite slight decreases in overall ICT budgets, Southern Alliance IT staff numbers remain steady and the team is pushing on with a large number of IT projects this year. These include the continuation of previous investments in ERP and business intelligence systems and processes, a development of a shared Patient Administration System, shared HRIS and integrated PACS, as well as ‘e-prescription’ initiatives.

Other health-based services will include development of e-referrals and other linkages with Primary Care and other health providers.

Taylor says the Southern Alliance is also continuing investment in and development of a new datacentre and in VoIP and wireless technologies. A software and server virtualisation strategy is also ongoing and is expected to lead to a reduction in management overhead, and operational savings on infrastructure.

Once the essential platforms are in place new projects include work on unified communications platforms, technologies and services, says Taylor.

Southern Alliance IT functions are carried out in-house. The exception is HR Payroll, which is outsourced to Datacom.