Day by Day

During the first lockdown last year, the Clinical Informatics Leadership Network was abuzz with talk about telehealth – tips and guidelines and tricks on how to refine their use of the technology and the processes they had to suddenly put in place. These clinicians were also wondering about the consumer’s experience and how people were taking the news that they couldn’t talk to or see their doctor or nurse in person for a while.

I’ve always been interested in telehealth, especially from the consumer’s perspective, so I suggested that we should start up a research project, which we did. Associate Professor Inga Hunter and I became the co-principal investigators of this project.

We invited people to join the research team. It was great to see the interest and support emerge. There were so many responses that we created a set of tiers for involvement.

There are those who are the movers, shakers and doers in the research team itself, who have been involved in the study design, the scope of the project and design and implementation of the questionnaires for the survey. They make up our research team of nine.

There are those who want to provide input into design, offer advice and support and be contacted for specialised contributions when needed – they are in the advisory group of 12. The New Zealand Telehealth Leadership Group followed our work with interest and early on endorsed the research.

In the coming blogs I will introduce you to the members of our research team and what they bring to the research project.

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