Colin McCririck moves into CIO role at eHealth Queensland

eHealth Queensland has found itself a new CIO and chief executive – Colin McCririck, who was CTO at Queensland Health for about a year.

McCririck will help implement the state’s eHealth Investment Strategy (2014-2018). This includes $300 million in ICT infrastructure, $130 million in digital technology and $30m in information interoperability across 16 hospital and health services (HHSs).

The strategy involves deploying mobile devices for remote monitoring of patients, including integration with biomedical beside devices.

Clinical data repositories, with business intelligence tools, are also a focus so that staff can conduct analytics and performance monitoring, as well as access the right information at the right time and place.

Information operability involves an information-sharing capability that is based on open standards so that staff can ‘plug and play’ with data shared between different devices.

“One of my first priorities is to strengthen relationships with the HHSs. It’s vital we work together to ensure our clinical and business systems, ICT infrastructure and the digital future of Queensland Health meets the needs of our frontline staff ,” Colin said in a statement.

He also said he will work more closely with industry, academia and startups in leveraging their expertise in e-health technologies.

“It’s about greater access to information, anywhere, anytime – working towards a fully integrated health system, where staff can access information as quickly and close to the patient as possible,” McCririck added.

Before joining Queensland Health, McCririck was CIO at Suncorp from 2012 to January 2015. He’s also had roles in IT architecture, management and consulting.

In related news, Malcolm Thatcher left Queensland Health as chief health information officer in August 2015. He decided to pursue a doctoral thesis in IT governance.

Michael Walsh, former CIO/chief executive of eHealth NSW, became director-general of Queensland Health in July 2015.

Queensland Health only recently recovered from a payroll system debacle that occurred over the last few years, where there was $3.5 million worth of overpayments to staff. Since then, it has moved to a new online repayment system.