Waitematā DHB doctor wins Clinical Informatics Leadership Award 2020

Lara Hopley, an anaesthetist and Clinical Advisor Digital Innovations at Waitematā DHB, is this year’s winner of the Clinical Informatics Leadership Award.

Lara has contributed leadership to many northern region DHB clinical IT projects to improve patient safety and clinical efficiency, including Waitematā electronic outcomes forms, electronic orders of tests from the metro DHB hospital to community laboratories, electronic referrals, and electronic prescribing from specialists to community pharmacies.

“I'm proud of the projects that originated at Waitematā and were then shared with the region; we've also received innovation back, in return, and patients are benefiting from our mutual efforts,” says Lara.

“It’s exciting to watch people use the various tools our teams have been able to deliver, see people's lives improving, and knowing you were a part of that.”

During the COVID-19 response Lara helped to rapidly deploy a system to manage COVID-19 positive patients in hospital, which was used across the region. She also spearheaded eNotifications from primary care, laying the groundwork for patients to have their negative test results through text messaging within minutes of it being resulted.

“Lara is able to share a vision and translate how it will work in reality to improve patient safety and outcomes,” says Waitematā DHB CEO, Dr Dale Bramley.

“Her ability to think through challenges and come up with real ways of making things better for our patients is a real asset to Waitematā DHB and the Northern region.”

More than 1000 public votes were cast to select the winner of the 2020 award. Lara receives a free pass and speaking slot at the 2021 HiNZ Conference in Wellington and $5000 from Spark Health, which she can use to fund further study or attend an international conference.

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