Rob Campbell: Former Health NZ chair says hospitals are in need of major technology upgrades

A former Health New Zealand chair is sounding the alarm about hospital hardware in need of an upgrade.

New reports confirm thousands of apps, a thousand servers, and a thousand devices around Health New Zealand hospitals are said to be fragile - in a released briefing to the Health Minister.

The briefing states technology can improve care.

Former Health Chair Rob Campbell says people just hope the issue goes away.

"It's too big a mess to put up with, it's not an unfamiliar mess compared to other public health systems around the world."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Perhaps not a surprise, but it turns out half the
country's critical IT hardware and hospitals as out of date.
Health New Zealand have said significant investment is needed just
to keep the lights on. The former Health New Zealand chair,
of course, is Rob Campbell is backward. This Rob, very
good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Come boy.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I take it this was the case when you were there.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
It was certainly the case before I was there for
quite a long time. It had been deteriorate quite a
long time, not just the IT, but the physical infrastructure,
the staffing infrastructure, the external infrastructure to support the primary
healthcare sector across the board.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Is it sort of like the air four seven five seven.
It's one of those things when you're short of doctors
and nurses, you focus on them and the bandages and
not the IT.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
No, I don't think the doctors and nurses would feel
they'd had too much attention. I think it's really quite
the opposite to that. This is a long term lack
of attention not just to spend, but to the efficiency
of spend. And it goes back as much to the
Ministry of Health and to polotics as it does to
far to Aura or indeed their predecessors, the district health boards.

(01:08):
There's a system which does not encourage innovation, does not
encourage addressing practical issues of how to make the system work.
It's directed from Molesworth Street, and like many things directed
from Wolsworth Street, it doesn't work all that well.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
And does everyone agree with that or not?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Frankly, I think everyone does pretty much agree. But the
secret is, and I suspect this is true and other
areas in the public so is that you don't talk
about it. It's a bit like fight club. You know
it's true, you don't talk about it, and therefore you
kind of hope it.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Will go away, okay, And so hence we end up
where we are. An overarching question for you your assessment of
our system? Is it as bad as people make it
out to be? And is it an example of public
systems all over the Western world? Basically because all I
ever do is do interviews about how bug it up
the health system is? Is it really that bigger mess?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's too big a mess to put up with. It's
not an unfamiliar mess compared to other public health systems
around the world, But I'm not sure that's much comfort.
While you're waiting in the emergency department or waiting for
an operation. So it is pretty common, and there are
some really big issues involved that all the more reason
to take a pragmatic, practical approach to what you can do.

(02:30):
There's been a bit of dreaming about our health system.
We observe it's terribly bad, and then we have people
who come in an event, these really sophisticated twenty first century,
twenty second century systems that will deal with all the things,
and they ignore the basic pragmatism of does this work?
Do we have a payroll system? Do the lights go on?

(02:50):
That kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
Good insight. I appreciate it. Rob Rob Campbell, former head
of Health News inaland For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
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