Orion Health

Right.

So that was a, that was a seven-year stint, and then you did what? Uh, uh, Orion Health, so-

No, about, about seven years with Orion Health as well.

Oh, Orion.

Okay, okay.

[laughs]

... yeah.

Uh, so yeah, so, um, uh, I, uh, moved to, uh, Orion Health, and again, it was, uh, one of those things where someone says, "Oh, you should go and work for Orion Health," and I trusted the person.

One of New Zealand's largest healthcare software companies wants all political parties to prioritize investment in technology, saying it will ease pressures in the health system.

Orion Health says structural change is needed as health needs become more complex, and the answer isn't spending more money.

Health professionals continue to sound the alarm over primary care access.

Uh, we're hearing about short staffing, burnout, and of course, overcrowded emergency departments.

Orion Health CEO Brad Porter joins us now in our Auckland studio for our weekly chief executive slot.

Kia ora, good morning.

Good morning.

So what we did is we focused on pulling together a digital health manifesto.

So a company that owns EMRs, owns clinics.

Um, and, and, um, you know, we, we started to partner with that company and then, uh, when we acquired Orion Health, which to me is one of the most exciting events, because if you think about what Orion Health has, is they spent 30 years creating interoperability, health information exchanges, connected care records.

So now we've got access to the data, access to the health systems, proven and validated AI that can surface these patients.

And, um, now we're, you know, got a number of solutions, but it's really around identifying patients to change their lives and to optimize healthcare systems around the world.

Either garbage in, garbage out that we just use superficial administrative data sets to train models or academic data sets outside of the real world and thinking your outputs would be good, to false starts of saying, "You know what? We're not gonna take things like privacy, governance really, really important." Um, and if you check both those boxes, I think that more than anything else is the accelerator to scale AI.

Hmm.

And the, and I think about the, um, you know, our good friends, the partners at Orion Health and, and this work that we're, we're talking about here, particularly in Australia too, the, um, uh, w- are you seeing that a lot of the stuff that's happening across the Hillwell side is, is then kind of working its way through? You know, you mentioned before about the excitement around HIEs and the, the capability and I guess the history that Orion has too.

Do you think that that changes the direction that, that they're going? It just kind of...