The roll out of the Health Connect South secondary care system and the primary care portal HealthOne was a notable achievement for the South Island this year, with Nelson Marlborough the last of the five DHBs to turn on HCS in February and local GPs getting access to HealthOne gradually over the next couple of months.
Our interview with NMDHB clinical director of information systems and Nelson GP Bev Nicolls was one of the year's most popular stories. The combined systems now represents a shared electronic health record for one million South Islanders which in future will be opened up to the patients themselves.
New Zealand's primary care PMS market, so long dominated by Medtech, began to fracture and change in 2017, as new entrants like Australia's Best Practice and Irish firm Valentia made some inroads. Canterbury PHO Pegasus decided to go with Intrahealth's Profile to replace Medtech32, with NZ Doctor reporting that it is set to be renamed Sirius, although practices that want to stick with Medtech can do so.
