Tech Users Summit 2026: Giving healthcare workers their time back

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Peter Drucker wrote “One cannot rent, hire, buy, or otherwise obtain more time.” If the many discussions and presentations at the Tech Users Summit in Auckland on 13 October are anything to go by, the health sector has firmly embraced this concept.

“It only takes ten minutes” sounds reasonable enough when you are asking a general practice to complete another return or enter another field. It looks rather different when you are the person receiving requests from several programmes, with patients waiting and yesterday's work still unfinished.

Tony Wai, Chief Executive of thePHO, described this challenge at the Tech Users Summit in Auckland on 13 October. A central organisation can save its own time by pushing work out to practices. From the practice's end, the work has increased.

That question stayed with me throughout the day. Amid all the digital investment, AI tools and new healthcare services being proposed, where will the people doing the work see real gains?

That includes the community nurse and the administrator keeping a small provider running, as well as the GP. Time spent compensating for a poorly designed process is time they cannot spend on the job they are there to do.

There was plenty of broad ambition at the summit, co-hosted by the Digital Health Association and TUANZ. Health New Zealand outlined its investment programme and the work needed to connect a fragmented system. We heard about AI, remote monitoring and robotics. Mark Darrow, Health New Zealand's Chair, kept the purpose clear: better care and better health outcomes.

Who ends up doing the work?

As Tony Wai put it, “The average general practice does not exist.” The practices supported by thePHO range from small services to organisations with more than 50,000 enrolled patients. Something manageable in a large urban practice can be a substantial imposition on a small rural team.

The same thinking applies to any organisation. A new requirement might be sensible in isolation. The person introducing it may have a perfectly reasonable purpose. But the recipient faces it alongside every other requirement, including those that have gone unreviewed for years.

We need to understand what our processes ask of other people. If a new referral process reduces administration for the receiving service but adds several steps for the sender, we should understand that trade-off. If it also requires the patient to make phone calls to find out what is happening, we have left an important part of the process to chance.

Common systems and standards can help. They need enough flexibility to accommodate how care is actually delivered, and someone needs to take responsibility for the whole journey. Otherwise, everyone can meet their own measures but the experience gets worse.

Checking where the time goes

Karl Metzler, Chief Executive of Gore Health, described using AI for meeting records and clinical documentation, alongside tools supporting skin assessment. He readily admitted that the community-owned hospital's approach had involved trying things against immediate problems. Gore has also been paperless for 12 years. Karl identified system outages as one of their biggest operational risks, because staff depend so heavily on those systems.

Karl said staff adopted tools when their value was obvious. Making someone's work easier is a fairly persuasive starting point.

He also joked that he would believe the claimed time savings when he saw more patients booked. I would want to check where the time goes too, although the answer need not always be more appointments.

Finishing notes before going home would count. So would giving a complex patient a little longer, or reducing a community worker's backlog. The person managing the service and the people using the tool should agree what they hope to achieve, then check whether it happens.

We also have to account for the work the new tool creates. A quicker first draft is useful, provided checking and correcting it does not absorb the saving. Adding another system while keeping every old step can leave staff with more to do.

I would look at the complete task before and after the change, including any copying between systems and the work involved in correcting mistakes. The person using the new tool may save time while someone further along has to fill in missing information. We need to hear from both before claiming a saving.

Finding the capacity to change

Grant Davidson from Hauora Taiwhenua described rural services with no spare capacity to investigate a crowded technology market, let alone implement everything on offer. In the remote town of Colville doctors are on call around the clock and there is no ambulance. A team in that position has very little room for a trial that takes longer than expected.

If we want those teams to change, someone has to help them make the change. That means time to learn, practical support and a clear understanding of what existing work can stop. Telling an overloaded team to innovate is another request for their time.

The rural digital action plan focused on recognisable needs, including remote monitoring and access to specialist support. Grant described virtual clinical support that would give rural clinicians access to emergency specialists. That is a specific service improvement against which to assess the equipment, support arrangements and changes to working practices it would require.

For any organisation, the capacity to implement an improvement deserves as much attention as the purchase price. Someone has to make decisions, test the new process and help colleagues through the awkward early stages. That effort needs to be acknowledged and planned.

A small improvement that releases some time can create room for the next one. Expecting people to implement several changes at once, on top of a full workload, makes even good ideas difficult to deliver.

Counting the effort we ask of patients

Back in the plenary with TUANZ, research was presented that described young people struggling with the cost of data, device repairs and reliable access. Some lacked safe places to charge their phones.

Shaz Reece from Te Rourou showed we are relying on young people's resourcefulness to compensate for systems that are failing them. Someone may manage to borrow a device or find help with a form. We should still ask whether it was reasonable to require that effort of them.

Services that can look wonderfully efficient from the provider's side while becoming harder for someone to use. Moving a task online may mean the patient now needs data, a working device and help to complete it.

For any organisation moving services online, we should walk through the process with the people expected to use it, watch where they get stuck and how they find help. A demonstration with a reliable connection and someone on hand to explain each step can conceal difficulties that become obvious once people are trying it on their own.

Digital services can make access easier, particularly when they save someone a journey. We should check who benefits and keep workable alternatives for those who need them. If someone abandons the process because they cannot complete a step, the service has failed them, however well the software performed.

The plenary presented this as a general problem, but the application in health is even more pointed, not just for rangatahi but for others with different challenges.

The foundations should make care easier

Health New Zealand's work on national information sharing offers an opportunity to remove some of these burdens. Heath Tolley and Ed Falloon described the foundations needed for information to move safely and retain its meaning across different systems. They acknowledge that this is a long-term journey and much work needs to be done before it becomes visible.

A distinction was made between simply connecting systems and making their information useful and trustworthy. Receiving a piece of data does not automatically tell a clinician where it came from, whether it is current or what might be missing. Provence of data is important when someone has to act on it.

The interruptions caused by missing information will be familiar to primary care. People have to find it, check it and fill the gaps before they can get on with the task. Across a working day, that takes time from both the person asking and the person responding.

Good foundations take sustained investment. Local teams also need permission and support to improve the processes they control now. There is room to work on both, provided local improvements can connect to the wider system rather than creating another isolated source of information.

Some work still needs a physical answer

Paulo Osorio from Deloitte – who had previously perplexed the room by saying he had arrived in a self-driving car - spoke about physical AI and robotics. He described nurses walking kilometres between wards, supply rooms and pharmacies, and the potential for machines to take on some of that movement and routine work.

His point was that better information alone cannot supply all the physical capacity healthcare needs. Even with the right information on screen, someone still has to collect supplies and move equipment.

Most general practices will not be buying a robot tomorrow. They can still examine where skilled people spend time collecting things, chasing information or repeating work, and whether a change in how the practice operates would help.

Start with one task that gets in the way

In one of the many side conversations during the breaks, I chatted with the CEO of one of DHA’s prominent members. We agreed that the focus on saving time episodically is not enough in itself. When I mentioned lean thinking, his eyes lit up and we agreed that this can make an important contribution that could be given more consideration at both a national and local level.

I would begin by asking the team which recurring task most gets in the way of care. Follow it from beginning to end, including what it asks of patients and other organisations. Establish why it exists and whether every step is still needed.

Then agree what improvement would look like. It might be fewer calls chasing referrals, less duplicated reporting or getting home on time. Give someone responsibility for the change and enough time to work with the people affected. Try it on a manageable scale and look at the result over an ordinary working week.

Keep an eye on quality as well as speed. A shorter process is useful when the necessary information and checks are still there. Ask staff what has become easier and what has become harder. Their answers may tell you more than the usage figures.

Tony Wai distinguished between deploying something, getting people to use it and achieving value. I would ask about all three when reviewing a change. If it helps, build on it. If it does not, stop or revise it. Staff should not have to carry every unsuccessful pilot indefinitely.

I came away encouraged by the examples of people getting on with improvements, and by the willingness of speakers to acknowledge the difficulties. I would like us to keep asking the people affected whether it is making their jobs easier and their care better.

The next time someone says “it only takes ten minutes”, I would like us to ask whose ten minutes they mean, and what that person will have to put aside.