Asthma NZ Leverages Tech And Exponential Thinking To Slash Asthma Hospitalisations And Focus On The Future

Asthma New Zealand leverages tech and Exponential thinking to slash asthma hospitalisations and focus on the future way of working

Ambitious goal to cut hospitalisations by 50% by 2029 receives boost with Quanton partnership

Summary

• Asthma New Zealand has embarked on a transformational digitalisation journey as it seeks to slash asthma and COPD hospitalisations by 50% by 2029.
• Low levels of health literacy in New Zealand are a significant reason for why hospitalisation rates for chronic conditions such as asthma are so high. New Zealand which has the second highest asthma rate in the world.
• Patient education is the key to effective asthma management, technology provides a powerful platform to do this.
• Partnering with Quanton, Asthma New Zealand has implemented new operating model and rolled out a new CRM as the foundation for more advanced technologies.

Auckland, Thursday August 18th 2022, - Asthma New Zealand’s transformation digitisation plans – and its aims to cut asthma and COPD hospitalisation in New Zealand by 50 percent by 2029 – have been given a kickstart with the deployment of the first stage of its digital transformation plan.

The not-for-profit provides asthma education nationwide through its nursing team which delivers in-community education, training and support to enable New Zealanders to self-manage their respiratory conditions.

It has teamed up with New Zealand digital transformation and automation specialists Quanton – including the company’s Operational Excellence Practice – to develop a digitisation plan leveraging an integrated approach to data, technology, people and processes, to achieve its goal of slashing hospitalisations by 50 percent.

Respiratory illness is the third-leading cause of death in New Zealand which has the second highest asthma rate in the world. Low levels of health literacy in the country are a significant reason for why hospitalisation rates for chronic conditions such as asthma are so high.

Asthma New Zealand CEO Katheren Leitner says she’s keen to harness technology to extend the organisation’s reach, enabling it to accelerate its path to achieving reductions in hospitalisations.

Patient education is the key to effective asthma management, technology provides a powerful platform to do this. Patients who complete Asthma NZ’s 3-Plus Self-Management Programme are 87 percent less likely to be re-admitted to the ER room for respiratory related problems and are 61 percent less reliant on reliever mediation.

“I realised quickly after joining Asthma New Zealand that we can never employ enough nurses to extend our reach enough,” Leitner says. “Humans, as important as they are, aren’t enough. We have to develop our triage systems, and that involves using technology.”

Beyond technology

While Asthma New Zealand is eyeing up a future harnessing advanced technologies including , conversational artificial intelligence, gamification and more integrated systems, the first step for the organisation has been deploying a new customer relationship management system to enable nurses to collect information more effectively when with patients and increase their productivity.

In the past nurses recorded information manually while with patients in their homes or out in the community, returning to the office to enter it into an old Access database, which acted as a data repository with little facility for extracting and using that data to show trends and make decisions.

Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM nurses can now enter data directly into smart devices – and the CRM – while talking to patients in the community.

“Ultimately we want to enable patients at times to be able to enter their data themselves, so they can be involved in their health records,” Leitner says. “A lot of higher risk or higher needs community have an innate distrust of the health system, and enabling them to be involved with the data helps in terms of the relationship and trust because they can see exactly what is entered about them.”

Leitner notes the system has already resulted in an improvement in the completeness and quality of the data collected.

The Exponential path to extending Asthma NZ’s reach

While the CRM is the first technology deployed under the new partnership with Quanton, Asthma New Zealand has also been working with Quanton’s Operational Excellence Practice to develop a ‘plan on a page’.

Asthma New Zealand worked with Quanton on Exponential thinking, to approach the problem differently rather than traditional linear approaches. A plan was formed that would enable Asthma New Zealand to make the quantum leap it desired, become an ‘exponential organisation’ and have a greatly amplified positive health impact.

Ravi Kulatunga, Quanton Operational Excellence Practice Lead says “Before you can travel down a digitisation path, it’s really important to get your business models and your people right. One of the key things for digitisation is the availability and access to data to make informed decisions around what technologies you are going to use. That is what has come out of working with Asthma New Zealand so they can start to look further ahead.”

The future technologies Asthma New Zealand are keen to harness will rely heavily on access to data to facilitate more productive ways of working making the deployment of the CRM a crucial first technology step.

“It gives them good foundation to be able to scale up now and in the future,” says John Che, Customer Success Manager at Quanton. “If we want to utilise artificial intelligence, machine learning, conversational AI or a patient or doctor portal, they have a very good foundation for all of those future integrations.”

Leitner says Asthma New Zealand is currently working with Quanton to increase its use and effectiveness of the new CRM, while also in tandem looking at the next steps in overlaying emerging technologies such as gamification tools, conversational AI bots, machine learning and leveraging exponential thinking to amplify their impact and effectiveness.

“The CRM is driving productivity, but it’s also ensuring we’re getting data so we can move further along our digital roadmap,” she says.

About Quanton

Quanton transforms business operating models to a new, future-focused way of working by helping build capability and find the sweet spots where operational excellence or automation can have the biggest impact on a business – with quantifiable benefit.

Quanton is led by its advisory services, and a specialised range of emerging automation and AI technologies, helping organisations simplify automation. Aligning digital transformation with their vision and strategy and connecting activity to the realisation of business goals. www.quanton.co.nz

About Asthma New Zealand

Asthma New Zealand is a not-for-profit organisation committed to creating a healthier New Zealand, where every Kiwi with Asthma and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) lives a full life.

As New Zealand's largest asthma educator, we have been at the forefront, fighting for a New Zealand that breathes easy since 1965. Education is the most powerful tool in reducing hospitalisation and improving the way we live with asthma and COPD. Our Nurses go to where our patients needs us to be, our services are free and can be accessed by everyone.

Our mission is to see a 50% reduction in asthma and COPD hospitalisation by 2029.

Nothing else matters when you can’t breathe.

www.asthma.org.nz

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