Early 2021 – working in partnership Whakarongorau Aotearoa and Spark Health have established the digital strategy to enable the recently updated business strategy for the National Telehealth Service including support for the National Covid-19 Vaccination Programme.
partnership. Using the CCL office as a ‘bunker’ the team comprised of Spark and CCL staff led by Spark Health CEO, Dr Will Reedy, gathered to form their approach. Leveraging agile ways of working, a battle plan was created detailing the key tasks, resources and existing
transformation strategy leveraging the great work started as part of the Covid-19 crisis.
timeline
January 2020 – a dedicated 24/7 phone service was established to provide Covid-19 related health advice and information. February to March 2020 – supported increase of call centres from three to eight and an increase in staff numbers to 426 including ex House of Travel call centre staff and Plunket nurses. 23 March 2020 – phone lines are overloaded as the first lockdown was announced. 31 March 2020 – daily number of calls increased from 1,445 to 12,763. Whakarongorau Aotearoa radically transforms its business overnight to meet the needs of New Zealanders. Mid-April 2020 – Whakarongorau Aotearoa staff number 500+ with many working from home. The new scaled digital services are delivered across New Zealand to support the needs of New Zealanders 12 August 2020 – Auckland in level 3. Ongoing enhancements to the digital services including increasing digital channel capacity e.g. network capacity, call volume capacity, 0800 capacity, enhanced cyber security services. February 2021 – further enhancements to the service for the Covid-19 Surge Service Desk to support community outbreaks.
digital services that needed to be scaled to meet the growing requirements of the National Telehealth Service for all New Zealanders.
services provided
Connect Contact centre solution;
procurement: hardware and software, mobile; voice; WAN; 0800; SMS; connected mobility; innovation fund; internet and connected health. Digitise Hybrid cloud services – public and private cloud; IT services desk including a dedicated service delivery manager; dedicated technical lead; security services and virtual desktop. Transform Minimum viable cloud on Microsoft Azure “Blueprints for the future have arisen from this innovative thinking. The health system over the last month has done some extraordinary things.” In essence, though, the National Telehealth Service is doing what it was designed to do, says Mr Slater. “We’ve just had to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in.”
Daily stand-up meetings including senior executives from Spark, Spark Health and Whakarongorau Aotearoa made quick decisions with clear roles and responsibilities to ensure the team moved at speed given evolving requirements on a daily basis. “Spark Health, Spark and CCL just got on with it. When the situation is dire, the only way to help is to make something happen,” says Mike Mulvaney, IT Manager, for
Whakarongorau Aotearoa. Covid-19 had accelerated
Whakarongorau Aotearoa’s next phase of digital transformation to ensure it can provide national telehealth services as the New Zealand health sector heads into an uncertain future with Covid-19: including the vaccination programme, the opening of travel bubbles and the implementation of the Health and Disability System Review. Spark Health continues to work closely with Whakarongorau Aotearoa to deliver their new digital
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