Foundations first: one source of patient data.

About Asthma New Zealand

Asthma New Zealand is a nationwide not-for-profit asthma educator, which has set an ambitious goal of slashing asthma and COPD hospitalisation by 50 percent by 2029. Its nursing team provide in-community education, training and support to enable New Zealanders to self-manage their respiratory conditions.

The challenge

“I realised quickly that we have nine nurses and it wouldn’t matter if I employed another 50 – we’d still have a patient ratio of 10,000 to one,” says Asthma New Zealand CEO Katheren Leitner.

When Leitner first sat down with Quanton she was buzzing with ideas for advanced technologies – a bot here, some conversational artificial intelligence there, integrating systems… Quanton’s response? “That’s fantastic, but where do you currently house your data?” The answer was in three discrete Access databases built back in the 1980s.

The solution: foundations first

Working with Leitner, Quanton’s Operational Excellence team developed a ‘plan on a page’ – an easy to follow, clear plan looking at where the organisation wanted to be in five years’ time and then breaking it down into one-year blocks of what is needed to achieve those goals.

The deployment of Microsoft Dynamics as Asthma New Zealand’s CRM system formed the first step, and is enabling the organisation to improve the productivity of the resources they already have. The organisation has moved from three discrete Access databases – one in Auckland, one in Wellington and one in Rotorua – which required nurses to take notes manually while visiting patients, then return to the office to input the notes into the system, to a single, cloud-hosted offering.

“We went through a rigorous selection process for the technology. It was critical to have a trusted partner like Quanton to help us as well as manage the implementation and change management,” Leitner notes.

What changed

Nurses are now able to enter data into any smart device, including their mobile, while meeting with patients, eliminating the double-entry previously required with manual note taking and then entering into the system when back at the office.

Leitner says within just a few months of starting to use the new system, Asthma New Zealand has seen improvements in completeness and quality of data, and nurse educator productivity.

“If we move into AI, machine learning, conversational AI or a patient or doctor portal, they have a very good foundation for all of those future integrations,” says John Che, Customer Success Manager at Quanton.