The New Zealand government has emphasised frontline services in its latest budget for health.

It has earmarked NZ$16.7 billion ($10.3 billion) over three years to "address cost pressures" in delivering healthcare services. It will "[provide] certainty of funding to the health system so work on improving our frontline services can continue."

Meanwhile, more than NZ$330 million ($203 million) that was set aside for digital health initiatives over the past four years up to 2027-2028 has been returned to this year's budget as savings. This includes NZ$187 million ($115 million) for the Data and Digital Foundations and Innovation" initiative and NZ$144 million ($89 million) for the "Data and Digital Infrastructure and Capability – Enabling Health System Transformation" initiative. Both initiatives aimed to deliver data and digital infrastructure and capability needed to implement health system reforms.

WHY IT MATTERS

The Digital Health Association, New Zealand's peak body for digital health, has raised concerns over the apparent reduction in funding for data and digital initiatives in health.

"The government has had to make some tough choices. We all know the state of the economy and the government's need to find savings in order to invest in frontline staff, infrastructure, and services. And in this case, it looks like some of the reprioritised funding may have come from existing programmes that had underspent their contingency from previous budget allocations," Ryl Jensen, the group's CEO, explained in a statement. 

Based on the Budget Summary of Initiatives, the funding will be returned "pending work to prepare investment-ready business cases for future investment."

Health Minister Shane Reti hinted at the release of a 10-year plan that will guide New Zealand's digital investments before the end of the year, a news report noted.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Over the past three years, the New Zealand government invested up to NZ$1 billion ($616 million) in the health system's data and digital infrastructure and capabilities. Half of this went to building Hira, the nation's new health information platform, which first phase of implementation is set to conclude this month, June. 

In a briefing to Minister Reti late last year, Te Whatu Ora said it plans to cut back on building new ICT systems and move to "fewer, more robust platforms." The health system, it noted, has a "patchwork" of over 4,000 clinical and business system applications, many of which are at or close to their end-of-life. These have also been incurring technical debts. 

The organisation also intends to focus on migrating existing ICT systems to the cloud, which it claims is a more cost-effective solution to boost service availability. Additionally, there are plans to expand its ICT capabilities for new models of care and invest in home care technologies.