Hospital IT problems the result of years of under-investment, experts say

The latest in a series of outages took five hospitals across the Waikato region - Waikato, Thames, Te Kūiti, Tokoroa, and Taumarunui - offline for 11 hours on Wednesday, caused by a connection problem with the data centre. Hospital IT problems are the result of years of under-investment, experts say, and warn it will not be a quick fix. The latest in a series of outages took five hospitals across the Waikato region - Waikato, Thames, Te Kūiti, Tokoroa, and Taumarunui - offline for 11 hours on Wednesday, caused by a connection problem with the data centre.

Staff were forced to switch to pen and paper, and Health New Zealand (HNZ) said some non-urgent appointments were deferred. HNZ said 68 appointments and 15 theatre cases were deferred at Waikato Hospital, and were being rescheduled. Robin Gauld, a professor in health systems who is now the executive dean at Bond Business School in Queensland, Australia, said it was due to years of under-investment.

"Especially over the last five years or so, [New Zealand has] been systematically under-investing across pretty much every area of health, and that includes the technology side of things. In May, Budget 2026 allocated $153.6 million over four years for HNZ to expand national cyber security monitoring and upgrade IT safety systems across the health system. HNZ is also investing $300 million of its own budget to help deliver the first three years of the Health Digital Investment Plan, which will replace ageing devices, modernise radiology systems, and upgrade core IT platforms.

But Gauld said the "cutback mentality year-on-year" in recent times had meant technology quickly became outdated. "It's a very, very long-term project to try and rectify under-investment in the health system, because you're talking about people often, and it takes a long time to procure people and get them in the right place, he said. The PSA is calling out job cuts in the data and digital teams for contributing to the increasing number of outages across hospitals.

But HNZ said there was no link between the outage and staffing numbers in the digital services team. HNZ's chief information technology officer Darren Douglas told Morning Report: "When we went through our restructure process, one of thing we were very clear about was that we were prioritising operational support for these critical systems. Gauld said the public could help by lobbying their MPs for change.

"If they have any opportunity to interact with our political leadership, they need to be asking them how they are accountable for the state of the healthcare system, and what they expect for patients. Health Minister Simeon Brown said in a statement: "I want to thank staff at Waikato Hospital for resolving the issue last night, and frontline teams for continuing to deliver care to their patients. "This year's Budget invested $153.6 million in Health New Zealand's data and digital services, alongside an additional $300 million from Health New Zealand, to deliver critical IT upgrades.