Editorial -- three developments to share
(Aotea News, September 2011)
By Dr Karen Wood, chief executive, Aotea Pathology
Welcome to our winter edition of Aotea News where we have three recent developments to share with you.
First, I’d like to let you know we passed our annual IANZ audit with flying colours, and once again, as with all previous audits, no corrective actions were required of us. The preparation and the nearly weeklong visit took up a lot of our time but it is something we also place much value in.
This year's audit encompassed a four-yearly peer review, meaning we were placed under considerable extra scrutiny. We were very pleased to have our peers review our work and to publicly acknowledge the quality and effectiveness of our processes and systems.
You can view our IANZ accreditation certificate online in a PDF document.
I’d also like to let you know that,following a successful trial of the electronic laboratory ordering system (eLab), developed jointly with HealthLink, we have identified further enhancements to boost its usability, and development is under way in Denmark.
eLab's strength is in its online tools for sharing important information between you, your patient and our laboratory, and for more easily transferring quality information.
The enhancements will give you even more ability to work with us online,and will greatly streamline our joint patient information sharing processes.
We see eLab as a very important tool in our ongoing strategy to improve the way we deliver services to your patients and to keep at the forefront of innovative techniques for doing so.
The goverment's National Health Board has eight core priorities to help build a 'unified health system', and our work in building the eLab system is designed to help meet those goals.
Two are directly applicable:
- Reducing waste and bureaucracy and improving the productivity of the health and disability system.
- Capital, IT and workforce capacity planning and investment supports service plans that are clinically and financially sustainable.
Read the National Health Board's eight core priorities online.
As you read this I am in Denmark -- where eLab is well-integrated into the health system -- working with the IT company helping us develop our eLab tool.
As part of the work, I will be visiting a large laboratory in Copenhagen to see how they use eLab and how they deliver clinical decision support to GPs.
I will report back to you in a future Aotea News with details and findings from the trip.
You can read more on our website about eLab and how it works.
Finally, I’d like to let you know that the first two staff members on our inhouse Graduate Development Programme recently qualified as medical laboratory scientists.
It’s a fantastic milestone for them and for us, too, in our work to retain good staff and offer them pathways to increase their skills and knowledge.