Expanding the digital means to better health at ProCare

and well being of the people of New Zealand. And representing a network of general practices that provide care to over 800,000 people demands a lot of robust technical infrastructure to efficiently deliver a number of health services, including clinical support, mental health, telehealth, and wellbeing.

“My team is a mix of different skillsets from data engineers, analysts, project managers, developers, and third parties,” she says. “So the team’s responsibilities are in a number of different areas. But the key is to support the services we offer across our business and drive population health outcomes by providing better data reporting and insights, not just internally and to members, but to external organizations that might require the aggregated data to see trends.”

Services are always in flux, however, especially in healthcare. The sector is currently experiencing an exceptional amount of change with government reforms coming in, and the responsibility to maintain standards while embracing new technologies presents a constantly moving target, especially having to consider embedded legacy tech.

“We’re dealing with many established systems across healthcare, and trying to embrace new technology,” she adds. “So it’s trying to find the right balance. Funding and cost increases across technology have impacted a lot of my colleagues across different healthcare organizations, and they’re all saying costs continue to go up at a time when there are so many changes, systems, and projects on the go. It’s hard to juggle.”

Despite the difficult choices that need to be made and the uncertain efficacy of new tech, Desai says it’s also a very exciting time with all the opportunities to think about doing things differently, whether those ideas come internally, domestically, or internationally.

“Instead of just going through the stages of transformation, we might be able to leap into the future a bit,” she says. “There’s a lot of things happening overseas that we could take advantage of, or learn from other experiences that could help New Zealand’s healthcare sector. My approach has been around having a clear two-year strategy, and allowing room for that to pivot and evolve as needed.”

O’Sullivan spoke with Desai about many things, including aligning digital initiatives with the business strategy, and how the organization is modernizing its data platform and mental health services. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On emerging technologies: I’ve been decentralizing some of the innovation because I don’t think it should just come from our team. I can see there’s a lot of people who want to use generative AI, ChatGPT, and AI in different ways, and it’s important to have that a bit decentralized. So we encourage the team to learn new technologies or ideas. I encourage my team, but I know other parts of the business also want to test new things. So we’ve put a number of governance frameworks in place that allow people to understand what they can and can’t do. So alongside my team, we have a process where anybody in the organization can come with an idea. It’s reviewed by peers to ensure it aligns to solving patient or business problems, and to our strategy, making sure that nobody else is already working on it, or has already developed something in that space. We then encourage a bit of a proof of concept approach to see if it works, or what we can do to refine it. People learn from it and we can get that collaboration across the teams. And we can make sure we’ve understood the problems we’re trying to solve.

On finding the tech balance: I’d say digital transformation in healthcare is a little bit behind. Financial services has been going through this for a very long time, and they’ve been disrupted multiple times. Healthcare has only started to be disrupted in the last five years. COVID was a big catalyst of people starting to think about loads of legacy systems and the need to run things. There’s a lot of change coming internally as well as from government reforms. So for us, the way I’ve approached it is looking at our digital transformation strategy and dividing it into key areas. So foundational being the first one, looking at things that can be legacy systems or things you must have in your organization. So for us, that’s our modern data platform, or our CRM. The next one is enabling the business with services, and empowering those who utilize them. So things like our websites, members portal, the things that our customers and our businesses are using. And ultimately, this enables them to do the work they want to do. So those areas are how I approach our strategy in terms of making sure we don’t forget about what we need to replace, making sure we still have focus on the things that can enable the business to move forward.

On the IT career journey: When I worked for Alliance Leicester, which is now Santander, I did product management for mortgages, investments, insurances, and then went on to direct marketing and looking at all their advertising for digital channels. That was a real first taste for me of digital and technology. It was also an organization that was going through a lot of transformation into digital banking back then, which was a completely different world than it is today. But that was kind of those first steps. Then, just before moving to New Zealand, I worked for Egg, which was the UK’s first internet bank. My role there was looking at new platforms and new technologies like contactless payments. Here in New Zealand, I’ve worked in many different sectors like payments, real estate, and now healthcare, focusing on digital transformation and customer needs and pain points.

On IT and the business strategy: Digital is aligned directly to our company strategy, and I do that essentially at the start of the year. When we go into planning at the end of the financial year, we make sure we’re future focused on the coming two to three years; what that looks like from an overall company and technology perspective. It’s an enabler for me. It’s about where the business and our customers are moving to, and what the needs are of our patients and members. It’s also about how we utilize the technology we have today, and what we’ll need in the future to drive a lot of the digital strategy. I work across our ELT to make sure we capture a lot of those business requirements, but also the needs of understanding customers so we make sure the strategy is aligned to not just a wish list but our strategic goals and our digital strategy. And then making sure everybody understands it.