Health services win with Winn at the helm

Brett Winn is Executive General Manager - Information Technology at Medibank Health Solutions, where he is responsible for improving the delivery of health services using technology. Specifically, he must reduce costs, streamline processes and improve the quality of patient care. He revels in this position despite the stresses, and wants to see government take a greater role in the delivery of health services to the community.

He was previously the CIO of US-based company McKesson which was acquired by Medibank Health Solutions in 2010, and he is accountable for all technical services and deliverables as well as the business project division that provides client-facing solutions.

Medibank Health provides solutions and services through government services. For example the federal government’s Health Direct which is a free service available 24/7 as a nurse triage service to all states in Australia excluding Queensland. The service is available in Victoria but under a different name.

The Health Direct service is provided by around 500 nurses from their homes around the country. They have the full IT solution delivered to their houses so it is easy to be up and running without a tech person needing to install it. It is a fully managed, high availability system which is designed to be the first port of call for people wanting to know answers to health problems when they arise and is intended to alleviate the hospital casualty queues. If necessary the nurse can elevate the call to a 000 call for instant action.

Medibank Health also provides this service as Healthline on behalf of the NZ government to its citizens in New Zealand.

Another service provided by the business project division is care management, which provides proactive care outside hospitals and manages conditions such as diabetes and congested heart failure so patients don’t have to be cared for in hospitals. This is a free service staffed by clinicians and occupational health staff.

The diverse portfolio of services is expanding all the time and now includes providing medical centres for some of the big mining companies in remote locations such as the Pilbara. The company has 2500 clinical and 100 information technology employees responsible for delivering these vital services.

With the delivery of health services being aided by technology, Winn sees the online space as where advancements can be made. He is not a fan of Google, though, where people go for information and then self diagnose.

Winn is an IT lifer, and that’s not a sentence. “I love every day of IT, there is never a dull moment and there is constant change in IT. I couldn’t imagine being an accountant, for example, and doing the same thing every day.” His first IT job, when 18, was on an IT help desk. Then a US publishing company wanted a network built so he took up the challenge and succeeded. “With IT, you get it or not get it and I got IT.”

The highlight of his career was working as a CIO for a media company in China. “It was really interesting to see how they operate in Asia. It’s vastly different to the way we work here.”

That might have been a highlight but Winn says, “My present job is my peak job from a personal sense because I know I am delivering value to the community. The services Medibank Health provides are a massive help, and the opportunity to deploy communications that meets the need of society is satisfying. Nothing short of world domination in this area will do.”

Winn said he strikes a good balance outside the excitement and stresses of work where he is just a Dad to his three children under five years. For pure relaxation he is an avid snow skier and had just returned from two weeks skiing in the US when V+D spoke to him.

Brett Winn is the Executive General Manager - Information Technology, Medibank Health Solutions, having previously been the CIO of McKesson Corporation. Winn has had a long and varied IT career but this is the pinnacle of his career so far as he is making a difference to people’s lives.