Waikato District Health Board(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking: 42

Senior IS executive: Alan Grainer, CIO
Reports to: Chief executive officer
Size of IS shop: 99

PCs: 2757
Mobile PCs: 459
Terminals: 348
Hand-held devices: 137
Total screens: 3701

Industry: Health and community services
PC environment: HP, Windows XP
Server environment: HP, IBM, Windows 2003, Unix
DBMS: SQL, Oracle, Unidata, Access
Address: Pembroke Street, Hamilton
Website: www.waikatodhb.govt.nz
Key IS projects this year: Messaging migration project; human resource management system upgrade; PACS/RIS (Picture Archiving and Communications System/Radiology Information System) implementation — with Bay of Plenty DHB; Connected Health Network for Waikato; electronic referrals.

“A major emphasis for DHBs in 2009 and onwards will be on regional collaboration for ‘back office services’ including ICT. Undertaking this systematically with capped staffing levels, whilst maintaining business as usual, will be our greatest challenge to date,” says CIO Alan Grainer.

Among key Health Waikato service targets are higher elective surgery levels and reduced emergency department waiting times, and patient safety goals. Further goals are to fulfil the District Annual Plan and balance the books, says Grainer.

IT budget and project budgets have increased slightly from last year, with a slight decrease in IT staff numbers. In 2008 Waikato DHB invested in development of its patient management systems, along with an HRIS upgrade, major WAN upgrade, investment in enterprise architecture and a new radiology and imaging system. In 2009, these projects will be extended to include a supply chain overhaul via upgrade and data integration of financial and HR systems, and expansion of the data warehouse.

VoIP technologies will be expanded, as will wireless infrastructure via a WAN extension. Grainer says focus on Public Record Act compliance also continues from last year.

A significant investment in terms of budget is laboratory system replacement and process improvements. Waikato DHB is also paying close attention to its e-channels this year, including e-discharge and e-referral systems.

Most ICT functions are conducted in-house, however financial systems are run as a shared service in conjunction with Canterbury DHB, while datacentre management is outsourced to Gen-i.