AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND– As the global pandemic continues to strain access to elective surgery, Novari Health has launched new technology to help manage surgical waiting lists in New Zealand and Australia. For the first time ever, healthcare systems now have access to an innovative tool to help manage surgical waiting lists.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant strain on global healthcare systems facilitating increases in inequity and reducing access. Some surgical procedures have necessarily been postponed allowing hospitals and health systems to redirect their available resources to dealing with COVID-19 patients. In response to these elective surgical backlogs, Novari Health has launched the Novari Centralised Surgical Wait List Management HUB (“The HUB”), consolidating real-time surgical wait list case information from hospitals across a region or country, enabling coordination for the management of elective surgical services. The HUB allows healthcare systems to understand, in real-time, where patients are waiting for surgery and identify bottlenecks at various stages of the surgical process within a healthcare system. Using wait list management, analytics, and interactive mapping, this innovative software supports ministries of health, local health executives, hospital leadership, surgical service managers, directors of surgery, and individual surgeons to manage and coordinate surgical services. This tool will help regions manage the real problem of postcode variation in access to care highlighted in the Health and Disability System Review.

Healthcare systems around the world have been working to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients. Having a state-of-the-art, centralised regional surgical wait list management system, not only greatly elevates their capabilities to manage surgical backlogs but will have a dramatic impact on patients waiting for surgery. The system can integrate with hospital information systems, including WebPAS, iPM, and others.

The HUB builds on Novari Health’s experience in implementing surgical wait list management systems and our unparalleled subject matter expertise in understanding the complexity of access to care for surgical and other healthcare services. This is foundational work that will now enable the Novari engineering team to leverage artificial intelligence to help health systems coordinate surgical services and load balance demand against available surgical resources.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

“In New Zealand and Australia, managing surgical services and ensuring patients receive treatment within their clinical priority timeframes is a constant juggling act for      hospitals and regions between elective surgery, emergency surgery and available resources. Novari can help make this easier for everyone involved, improving equity and access for patients.”      

- John Sinclair, CPHIMS, Chief Executive Officer‍