healthAlliance(MIS100 2009)

By CIO staff | Friday, July 24 2009

2008 ranking: 17

Senior IS executive: Phil Brimacombe, CIO
Reports to: CEOs of Waitemata and Counties Manukau DHBs and healthAlliance COO
Size of IS shop: 114

PCs: 5462
Mobile PCs: 596
Terminals: 1043
Hand-held devices: 330
Total screens: 7431

Industry: Health and community services
PC environment: HP, Windows XP
Server environment: HP; Sun; IBM; Windows 2003, 2000, NT; AIX; Linux
DBMS: Oracle, SQL
Address: Middlemore Hospital, Otahuhu, Auckland
Website: www.healthalliance.co.nz
Key IS projects this year: New datacentre; Oracle RAC upgrade; new data storage implementation and technology refresh; storage archival platform implementation; well child information system; regional mental health information system; TestSafe pharmacy dispensing repository; CMDHB Community Information System; rostering and timesheet automation.

HealthAlliance is responsible for providing IT strategy, operations and services to two Auckland District Health Boards — Waitemata and Counties Manukau. HealthAlliance is also a regional IT service provider, hosting the TestSafe laboratory results reporting repository for the three Auckland metro DHBs and for GPs, and Oracle ERP for Taranaki DHB. CIO Phil Brimacombe says priorities in 2009 for both DHBs include quality improvements and patient safety, population health improvement, new models of care, workforce strategies, along with financial sustainability and budget performance. A constant challenge is managing the demand for information services generated by the two health boards.

“This exceeds the capacity of the IS department; we continue to work with our users on this issue. Additionally, as everyone in health is so busy, it is challenging to engage senior management and front-line staff to partner with IS to develop and deliver IT-enabled business projects, and to prioritise the large programme of work across the enterprise,” says Brimacombe. Both ICT and ICT project budgets are down by more than 10 per cent in 2009 for it, and funding priorities have been allocated with extra care as a result. In 2009, the largest areas of ICT investment include an electronic referrals system to facilitate GP and hospital communication; ‘TestSafe Pharmacy’ which describes the sharing of electronic medication information between clinicians; and the Kidslink Well Child Information System.