Migrating NZePS to Azure

Whānau Tahi featured in eHealthNews.nz Industry Innovation article.
Our Chief Information and Security Officer - Clinton George, and Chief Technology Officer - Allan Blackwell, share their experiences.

The use of the NZ ePrescription Service (NZePS) grew rapidly in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to improve stability, security and scalability, service provider Whānau Tahi migrated the NZePS to Microsoft Azure.

NZePS provides a core platform for the secure exchange of electronic prescription and dispensing information between authorised prescribing and dispensing organisations and systems and to-date has been primarily focussed on community prescribed and dispensed medications.

Pre Covid-19, while dispensing systems were using NZePS for all community based dispensing, uptake of the service was relatively low from prescribing systems at around 16 percent of general practices in March 2019.

When Covid-19 hit New Zealand’s shores, the opportunity to deliver benefit to the community via paperless prescribing was recognised. The service became critical as general practices rapidly switched to a digital first approach when caring for patients and the number of GPs sending prescriptions electronically has been steadily climbing since.

The total number of NZePS compliant eScripts being issued rose from around 620,000 in March 2020, to more than 1.5 million in March 2022.

“The Azure platform allows us to track and observe performance and scale as needed. You get immediate feedback and insight into service performance, which is of massive value to the whole health sector,” Blackwell says.

“We have increased our agility and ability to innovate faster and deliver benefits to our customers and the wider health system.”

Read the full article here: Migrating NZePS to Microsoft Azure - Health Informatics New Zealand (hinz.org.nz)