Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora has launched two national public cloud platforms in what the agency says is ‘a significant step forward in modernising the health sector’s infrastructure and capabilities.

Launched in the first quarter of 2024, the AWS and Microsoft Azure platforms will host a range of national services covering both clinical and non-clinical applications in a $4.5 million hybrid multi-cloud project, with the National Data Platform playing a ‘crucial role’ in the digital ecosystem.

“The deployment of these national platforms signifies a significant step forward in modernising the sector’s infrastructure and capabilities.”

Bryce O’Kane, Health NZ general manager, hybrid multi-cloud, told iStart the current focus is on hosting cloud-native applications that embrace modern operational methodologies, such as infrastructure-as-code and automated pipeline deployment.

“These applications will enable a more agile and efficient hosting environment,” O’Kane says.

Up to 80 percent of Health New Zealand applications were previously on-premise.

In its briefing to incoming Minister of Health Shane Reti earlier this year, Health NZ warned that the Kiwi public health system was run on patchwork IT, often with no effective backups, and was experiencing more frequent and more serious outages with risks of unsafe data sharing and breaches.

The organisation inherited a patchwork of around 4,000 IT systems which were not integrated and were often out-of-date when it was established to replace 20 district health boards, eight shared services agencies and some of the functions from the Ministry of Health.

O’Kane says the launch of the platforms is pivotal moment for the sector.

“It represents a move towards consolidating disparate public cloud environments – a legacy from the era of district health boards – into a unified and efficient infrastructure. This consolidation is expected to lead to significant improvements in rationalisation, optimisation and efficiency.

“By simplifying IT infrastructure and unifying networks, the sector aims to enhance the delivery of national services to Health NZ’s regions and areas, streamlining operations and fostering a more integrated health service.”

O’Kane says the ultimate goal is to optimise and minimise the on-premise IT footprint while expanding the use of cloud platforms, supporting the sector’s evolution towards more agile, resilient and efficient operations.

The Nation Data Platform (NDP) which aims to simplify and unify the sector’s multitude of data environments, reducing costs, complexity and duplication, is hosted in Snowflake on AWS. Work began on that project, creating a common platform for national datasets previously spread across multiple platforms, in 2023.

It includes a federated data platform at its core, made up of a suite of integrated technology products. At its centre will be national datasets, ‘organised into an integrated conformed data model’ – the NDP. At the periphery will be self-governing zones where Health NZ, its districts and regions and ‘potentially’ some other organisations can manage their own data, complemented by data sharing to and from the central data model.

Recent updates on the NDP say from June 2024 access to the platform will be increased, with more data added.

O’Kane says ancillary support services for the NDP are also hosted on the new national AWS platform ‘making it the natural choice for these services’.

“This integration ensures a cohesive environment that supports the NDP’s requirements.

The decision to adopt a hybrid multi-cloud environment was driven by the diverse requirements of the sector, he says.

“This approach acknowledges the need for both on-premise and cloud-based hosting solutions to meet varying demands for resilience, latency and other factors. The multi-cloud aspect further recognises that different providers may offer solutions that better fit specific needs, highlighting the importance of flexibility in hosting decisions.”

O’Kane says the platforms are developed to align with industry best practice, offering enterprise-grade solutions for cloud platform hosting.

“This has not been about starting from scratch, but rather enhancing and repurposing existing public cloud assets. This approach allows for leveraging the strengths of previously owned resources to provide a robust foundation for these new national platforms.”

Amazon was a key player in many of the IT systems implemented by the Ministry of Health during Covid-19, including for contact tracing.

Decisions on what applications are hosted and where have, to date, been made on a case to case basis, but a detailed decision strategy, guiding future placement of applications under the hybrid multi-cloud environment, is in development.

O’Kane says the future focus will be on modernising the infrastructure that supports the platforms, including the networking backbone across New Zealand and other ‘crucial’ systems such as identity and access management.

“These efforts are part of a broader health system transformation programme, including application consolidation and modernisation,” he says.