Digital Health Leadership Forum 2026

Ray Delany
2 days ago
6 min read

The Digital Health Leadership Forum returned to Wellington on 12th May 2026 with a program that covered a lot of ground, from government procurement reform to quantum computing timelines.

Sitting across a full day of sessions, a few consistent threads emerged: demographic pressure is building faster than the system can comfortably absorb, public trust in health data is more fragile than many boards appreciate, and the window for getting AI foundations right is shorter than it looks. Here is a rundown of the day.

The morning: pressure from above and below

Associate Minister Casey Costello opened by setting expectations clearly. The government, she told us, intends to be judged on delivery and outcomes, not on the number of strategies published or pilots completed. The focus areas she named, virtual care, health targets, and hospital-in-the-home, reflect a genuine effort to relieve pressure on physical infrastructure rather than simply digitise what already exists. She also clarified the scope of the Medical Products Bill: software and AI will only be regulated when used for specific therapeutic purposes, leaving administrative tools outside the regulatory net. That will be a practical relief for many organisations currently uncertain about their compliance exposure.

A more arresting presentation for me came from Louise Zacest, Chief Executive of Nurse Maude. She put a simple number on the table: the population of New Zealanders aged over 85 is set to double. That kind of demographic shift does not bend to incremental improvement. Louise argued that the baby boomer generation will be far more demanding patients than those who came before them, accustomed to choice, connectivity, and services that adapt to their lives rather than the other way around. She was direct about the consequences of failing to meet that expectation: private providers and AI companions will step into the gap. The challenge for public health is to design continuous, home-centred care before that happens, not after.

Government plumbing and procurement

Deputy Government Chief Digital Officer Myles Ward laid out the all-of-government digital target state, and the central message was that fragmented agency-by-agency technology investment has run its course. The shift toward shared public digital infrastructure (including a single digital wallet and unified credentialisation) is intended to organise services around citizens' life events rather than around the internal boundaries of government agencies. That is a significant conceptual shift, even if the execution will take years.

Michael Alp from MBIE covered procurement reform, which may be less exciting in headline terms but matters considerably in practice. The rule set has been reduced from 74 to 47, removing some of the bureaucratic friction that has historically slowed purchasing decisions. A new economic benefit test now requires a 10% weighting for New Zealand-owned businesses on contracts over $100,000, a deliberate attempt to channel government spending toward the local technology sector.

Clinical realities and industry snapshots

The late morning panel on clinical leadership made a well-worn point worth dwelling on: the gap between how developers imagine clinicians work and how they actually work is the single biggest contributor to digital health failures.

The recommendation was straightforward, if not especially new: get clinicians involved at the design stage, not brought in at the end to sign off on something already built.

The industry quickfire sessions that followed were a useful mix of challenge and encouragement.

Gabe Rijpma put New Zealand's $240 million in digital health investment next to Australia's $5.5 billion and noted that three years of ground has been lost. The funding gap is real, and the research infrastructure needed to remain competitive takes time to build even once funding improves.

Angela Lim from Clearhead offered a concrete example of technology changing care economics in mental health. By automating administration through a platform, the organisation can pay clinicians double the market rate and get patients seen in three days. Those are the kinds of outcomes that tend to shift sceptical minds.

James Daniell from Orchestral made an argument that will probably become more common over the next few years: AI agents should be treated as a new category of participant in the healthcare system, not just a tool. That framing has real implications for governance, liability, and infrastructure design.

Jono O'Sullivan-Scott pushed back on the assumption that clinicians are reluctant to move into technology roles, noting strong appetite for exactly those positions. Noor Syed from Microsoft made the case for inclusive leadership as a prerequisite for using AI in ways that produce genuine value rather than simply accelerating existing processes.

Privacy: the trust gap

I did miss one presentation I wanted to see but caught the second half of Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster's session, which was enough to be useful. The data he presented deserves attention from anyone in a health leadership role.

On the governance side, only 57% of directors reported that their boards regularly review privacy risks, and just 55% receive comprehensive data breach or cyber-risk reporting. Those numbers are too low for an environment where health data is increasingly centralised and interconnected.

On the consumer side, 82% of New Zealanders want more control over how their personal information is collected and used, and 66% consider it a major concern. Specifically for health information, 56% of people are concerned about its security, and that figure has risen significantly from the previous year. There is also a notable trust gap: while 59% of people believe organisations respect their privacy rights, one in five actively disagrees.

Placed alongside the day's broader themes: unified clinical records, all-of-government infrastructure, AI integration, those numbers are a useful reality check. The technology ambitions are sound, but public acceptance of them is conditional. Boards that treat privacy as a compliance exercise rather than a strategic priority are building on unstable ground.

Afternoon: execution and the longer horizon

The afternoon sessions moved into implementation territory. Tracy Voice from Ministry of Social Development made the point that MSD is often dealing with the financial consequences of health systems failures. ACC's Michael Dreyer described how data platforms and automation are being deployed to address a $2 billion annual shortfall, with clinical teams currently spending 60% of their time searching for files rather than doing clinical work. That is a solvable problem, and the early results suggest it is being solved. Stuart Bloomfield from Health New Zealand shared some tangible numbers from unified clinical records work: ward round times in Taranaki cut from 4.5 hours to 2 hours, paper-based transfers eliminated at North Shore Hospital.

The trio were joined by Darren Douglass from Health NZ on a panel discussion.

which pointed again toward a more connected social sector where, for example, a patient's fitness-for-work assessment flows automatically to MSD without requiring a physical medical certificate. The friction in that current process is significant, and removing it would have meaningful effects for patients and clinicians alike.

Madeline Newman from the AI Forum closed the day with a keynote that framed the current moment as an "age of monsters". This phrase that captures both the genuine uncertainty and the scale of what is coming. She pointed to next-generation robotics already arriving and quantum computing impacts expected within two to three years, and her call to establish AI literacy and physical AI regulation before the technology moves beyond the law's reach seems timely. Her closing note was more reassuring: AI will augment healthcare workers rather than replace them, making human judgment and clinical curiosity more valuable, not less.

Takeaways

The forum covered a lot of material, and reasonable people will prioritise different parts of it. For those working in or around health technology in New Zealand, a few things stood out.

The demographic case for redesigning care models is concrete and time-bound, not theoretical. The procurement and infrastructure reforms create a more favourable environment for getting that work done. The privacy data is a genuine warning that public trust cannot be assumed. And the AI governance conversation is behind where it needs to be, given the pace of change. Whether those conditions produce a step change in the system's capability over the next few years is the question the next forum will be in a position to answer.

As a first outing for the DHA-HINZ partnership signed last year, this forum can be considered a success and is a credit to the organisers. The sector will no doubt look forward to more of the same quality in the future.

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