IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
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How IoT promises to change the ANZ healthcare industry
Tue, 4th Sep 2018
FYI, this story is more than a year old

At a point when New Zealand and Australian healthcare systems are in crisis, Health Hub Project New Zealand (HHPNZ) and ANZ based technology company BlockBit Solutions have formed a partnership. 

Together they will supposedly drive healthcare in new directions for the future; locally, nationally and internationally, using a technology platform built on Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) combined with Data Science, IoT and Digital Identity.

General practitioner and past co-director of the Central District Hospital Emergency Department, David Hill, and organisation development researcher, Pat Nolan, both co-founders of HHPNZ, have described the design and approach that HHPNZ is taking as innovative and leading edge. 

HHPNZ is New Zealand's newest and most futuristic medical and healthcare organisation with headquarters located in the heart of the Palmerston North City.  HHPNZ outreach clinics are operational in Vogel Street, Terrace End and Brentwood Avenue, Highbury.  Other clinics are on the drawing board for Summerhill and other cities across New Zealand in the next year with expansion plans across to Australia in 2019.

Nolan said, “Our position is that Health is a basic right for every human, and HHPNZ mission day today, is to make that right a reality and our top priority for action. Over the past few years, we have invested significant time and effort into Healthcare research and development to understand what the health industry and our patient's need and demand."

To achieve its mission and goal HHPNZ is working in partnership with BlockBit Solutions. Together they are developing a “Patient First” platform, built using distributed ledger technology (DLT/Blockchain) combined with Digital Identity, IoT and Data Science, which patients and their health care providers, caregivers, clinicians to specialist consultants, can easily access to provide the highest level of healthcare patients deserve.”

Two key design features of the joint HHPNZ-BlockBit Solutions strategy and approach is “innovative future-focussed” and patient-centred.

When fully in place, the HHPNZ platform will supposedly create a seamless patient experience across every touchpoint of healthcare. 

For instance, patients will have access to mobile consultations from anywhere in real time, be able to make electronic updates to their medical history and have control over their medical record, eliminating the need for medical staff to manually enter updates from a paper form and update patient information sooner, and thereby help providers deliver more personalised and relevant care without delay.

Hill says, “The HHPNZ platform is a wholistic approach; it will help eliminate the need for patients, institutions, and medical practitioners all paying unnecessary costs for fragmented medical data management, as at present, and it will do this with a single unified historical view of each patient's medical record held in a secure, confidential ledger and in accord with medical record data protection regulations. It's about using emerging technologies to improve access and health equity."