Health

Our August Smart Talk Future Thinking speaker series welcomed Dr Lance O'Sullivan. He spoke to us about the future of health service planning and delivery and i-MOKO – using technology in our thinking about the future of health and wellbeing in our communities.

An award winning Māori doctor and innovator, Dr O’Sullivan talked about the need to democratise the health system in New Zealand, making it available for all. He sees the health system as ‘broken’ and in need of disruption. 

How? Lance sees AI (artificial intelligence) as the future. His vision of a fully functioning, AI healthcare system in Aotearoa includes the use of digital devices that are responsive to voice. This means a patient would be able to call up a virtual doctor when they’re feeling unwell, input their symptoms and be asked supplementary questions. The patient would be able to hold their digital device to their forehead to take temperature, hold it to their chest to take a heartbeat reading, the virtual doctor would be able to listen to breathing and pulse too. From this real time information comes diagnosis or advice on next step action.

A fascinating discussion began as our panellists contributed. 

The panellists who joined the discussion were:

• Sarah Davey (Planning Manager, Integrated Healthcare, Bay of Plenty DHB)
• Roimata Timutimu (Kaiako Te Kohanga Reo o Matapihi)
• Dr Joe Bourne (Director Innovation and Improvement BOPDHB and local GP)
• Ernie Newman (Established the telehealth services in the Bay of Plenty)
• Terry Jennings (One of the Tauranga Hospital nurses who established the renal telehealth service between Tauranga and Waikato)

Dr Joe Bourne, Director of Innovation and Improvement BOPDHB and a local GP supported much of what Dr O'Sullivan had talked about and was interested in looking at increased opportunities for using technology to improve people's access to health services.

We also heard from Terry Jennings, who explained that telehealth services are taking steps towards the kind of innovation Dr O’Sullivan is hoping for with their interactive renal telehealth service between Tauranga and Waikato.

Ernie Newman is a specialist in e-Health and spoke of how the use of technology can increase people's access to advanced health services when they live away from main hospitals. Here's Ernie's blog post from the session