Innovation to focus on freeing workforce capacity

NEWS – eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Health innovation must be relentlessly focused on reducing friction and freeing up capacity, not adding to the strain on clinicians, says chief data and digital at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora.

Leigh Donoghue presented at the Digital Health Leadership Summit in Wellington on May 14 where he quoted from a research paper saying that innovations contribute substantially to health care's capacity problems, as every innovation requires more infrastructure and more time for the people delivering health care.

He said the pace of innovation is outstripping the workforce’s capacity to deliver those when health professionals globally are already in short supply and there is low workforce morale.

The conclusion is that “healthcare needs a new chassis… something that lifts us, that removes and reduces the friction and allows us to move faster and more effectively to learn and improve, and I'm talking about truly tech-enabled healthcare”.