More than 800 New Zealanders from the health and tech sectors will unite at the annual Health Informatics New Zealand (HiNZ) conference in Rotorua later this year which aims to help break down silo barriers and support the success of complex digital health projects to improve health outcomes for New Zealanders.

The HiNZ event is the largest digital health conference in New Zealand and is attended by the leading national and international decision-makers and influencers in digital health, from public and private healthcare providers and funders, government and industry.

This year HiNZ, NZ Health IT and Nursing Executives of NZ (NENZ) are combining their efforts for the first time to provide opportunities at the conference for the health and tech sectors to gain greater understanding of each other’s needs.

HiNZ chief executive Kim Mundell says the conference offers a convenient way for a broad range of professionals to learn about the latest in digital health. This diversity ensures a holistic perspective, with no one professional group dominating the programme.

“The HiNZ conference gives clinicians, IT professionals, health sector managers, academics and students the chance to broaden their networks and collaborate on important digital health issues – between professions, regions and organisations.

“Digital health projects require adaptive change and the success of a change project has more to do with people than technology. The barriers are often cultural and behavioural in nature, not technical which is why this conference includes speakers talking on issues that relate to the psychology of change and to organisational leadership and culture,” Mundell says.

Mundell says the one-day NZ Nursing Informatics (NZNI) conference run by NENZ is a vital component of the three-day event because nurses need to increase their influence on digital projects.

“Nurses are frontline users of many of the technology solutions being introduced into healthcare so having them positively engaged is always a key success factor in IT project rollouts.

“To better link technology with clinical practice and daily workflows, nurses need to increase their influence on projects at the earlier design phase. Developing their IT vocabulary will assist nurses to better articulate their clinical needs to technology experts,” Mundell says.

Health Informatics New Zealand is a not-for-profit organisation that supports the field of health informatics and links a diverse group of professionals in the health and IT sectors. HiNZ has run the annual HiNZ Conference for the past 15 years.

This article was originally sourced from Stuff.co.nz.