Why use standards?
When there are standards, it means that people in the industry/sector have got together and thought about the question: “What is the best way to do this?”. Standards related to in the industry/sector are developed and agreed so that everyone that wants to develop supplies, products, processes, and services has the same references, tools, agreed languages and taxonomy.
Benefits
Widespread adoption and use of standards:
- Allows technology to work seamlessly.
- Establishes a common language to measure and evaluate performance.
- Means powerful agreements don’t just span local regions but are internationally accepted and enable commonality and consistency.
- Ensures that organisations are not creating bespoke or proprietary technologies.
- Makes the interoperability of components developed by different companies possible.
- Protects health consumers by raising industry best practices that emphasise safety and quality control.
The best standards are:
- Focused on people
- Supportable
- Appropriate
- Adaptive to present and future needs.
Outcomes
People are empowered by evidence-based standards that have explicit expectations embedded into them to change their behaviour and practices to achieve better quality outcomes, including:
- Partnering with patients and whānau.
- Working with partner agencies, health providers, Hauora Māori groups, clinical and consumer groups, the health software industry, overseas jurisdictions, and international organisations.
- Committing to the five Te Tiriti principles of tino rangatiratanga, equity, active protection, options and partnership set out by the Waitangi Tribunal Health Services and Outcomes Inquiry (Wai 2575) and Health NZ’s Te Tiriti Framework.
- Encouraging environmental sustainability and meeting climate resilience priorities.