Southern District Health Board (MIS100 2012)

“There is a strong focus on regional standardisation and collaboration across the South Island DHBs, guided by the Southern Alliance. As a focused work stream under the Alliance, IS will be working towards aligning processes and reducing systems duplication in a best-for-patient manner,” says CIO for the Southern DHB, John Simpson.

Simpson was appointed to the CIO role in November 2011, after serving as acting CIO and infrastructure and services manager for a year.

As with the majority of DHBs across the country, business continuity and disaster recovery maintenance and enhancements are planned for this year, as well as projects in mobility, wireless, unified communications, knowledge management and business intelligence. Top projects, says Simpson, will be a replacement of the clinical desktop system, roll out of the new e-prescribing system and PAS consolidation.

The e-prescribing electronic management system is the result of a successful pilot completed in 2010/11. Roll out to the whole of the Southern DHB was approved after thorough investigation. The system is a strong example of technology implemented to support business objectives, as it has been shown to simultaneously improve the quality and reduce the cost of health care.

As the DHB moves toward centralisation of its IT operations, consolidation of patient administration systems (PAS) has been a natural next step. The project is expected to reduce administration and improve usability and patient flows.