Software

telehealth software Information

Health providers should first seek guidance from within their organisation. Most District Health Boards have some telehealth capability and are working with haste to expand this. Primary healthcare providers should seek advice and support from their Primary Health Organisation (PHO). Again many are rapidly developing guidance on telehealth.

 

Consumer software and messaging apps

Most consumer social media messaging apps including (but not limited to) FaceTime, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and Skype should not be used unless there is no practical alternative. These apps generally have end-to-end encryption, but user data may be harvested and used in various algorithms. often these services are also based on personal profiles, blurring the boundary between professional and personal.

We encourage the use of business-grade software solutions which are currently used or endorsed in NZ by established health providers who have completed both Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) and Cloud Risk Assessment (CRA). We encourage all organisations and companies to work towards completing their own PIA and CRA. However, some guidance can be taken from the following providers that are currently active in the NZ health sector.

 

Primary Care Patient Management System (PMS):

All of the main PMS providers have either video consultations integrated into their systems or are actively developing these.

  • Indici
  • MedTech, ManageMyHealth
  • Profile
  • MyPractice

 

Telehealth platform providers:

These systems may include more health-specific features for example patient waiting area and payment platform

 

Specialist Video providers

These systems are video platforms but can very effectively be integrated into a health providers workflow

  • Cisco Jabber (Spark & Dimension Data)
  • Polycom Real Presence (Vivid Solutions & Spark)
  • Vidyo (Telesmart)
  • Zoom (ConnectNZ & Zoom.us)

We are actively working on expanding this list and on providing example case studies of implementations in various
applications. These will be available at www.telehealth.org.nz. We encourage industry partners to make contact with us.