23 November 2022
Orion Health is a global, award-winning provider of health information technology with a mission to empower clinicians and caregivers with the right information to deliver the best possible care.
Founded in 1993 by Ian McCrae, the company has focused on delivering software, services, and support for healthcare organisations across 13 countries. Orion Health has consistently ranked amongst the top 20 and ambitiously aims to revolutionize the health sector through integrating data into one health platform that allows analysis and - most importantly- prediction of care needs using data science.
In July this year, Orion Health appointed Brad Porter as the new CEO of the company, with Ian McCrae continuing to play a key part as executive director with a particular focus on products.
Brad was the General Manager Commercial (International Sales) at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare where he helped to lead the 1,300-person global sales team across 53 countries. He has a strong commercial background and previously worked for KPMG and Coller Capital.
We caught up with Brad and the Orion Health team to discuss their strategy and priorities for 2023.
Orion Health, and your previous employer Fisher & Paykel Healthcare work within the healthcare sector selling to hospitals – can you elaborate on how sales work differently for a High-tech manufacturer versus an ICT company in the sector?
In the end, it really comes down to the products we’re selling. I’ve been immensely fortunate to work with F&P Healthcare and now Orion Health. Both organisations have world-class New Zealand-made products. Whether it’s hardware or software, it’s all about solving problems and coming up with solutions. Sometimes you’re selling to trained medical professionals working for hospitals, other times you’re working directly with Government organisations, but ultimately it comes down to delivering solutions that make work easier for health practitioners and improving patient health outcomes across the world.
In the press release announcing your appointment it was mentioned that you have helped Ian develop Orion’s strategy for the future. Could you elaborate on Orion’s strategic direction moving into 2023?
It was fantastic to work closely with Ian to develop Orion Health’s strategy for the future.
Our focus moving forward is to help transition healthcare industries across the world from thinking about reactive care to proactive advanced population health. The future is about delivering the right care, to the right people at the right time, ideally before they become unwell.
Population health can be achieved by implementing meaningful health technology, such as Health Information Exchanges (HIE) and Digital Front Doors (DFD). Orion Health’s DFD puts individuals in control of their own healthcare journeys. It empowers users while making work easier for health practitioners by bringing together new and existing health information, data, solutions and services into one integrated suite of tools. The HIE brings together siloed data across the healthcare system into a unified view, enabling clinicians to have the information they need about a patient to determine the right treatment. Unifying the data between people and the carer can also have a tremendous impact on outcomes for the person and the healthcare system.
I believe this technology will really shake things up for the better, like how internet banking did for the banking sector.
What are your top three business priorities for the rest of 2022 and 2023?
1. Lead Orion Health to the forefront of the way healthcare is changing across the world – transitioning the world away from sick care to preventative, people-centred healthcare by providing impactful solutions that focus on reimagining healthcare experience - for the carers and the population.
2. Support my team at Orion Health, and continue to make sure this is a place people want to work by offering ongoing employee development, staff perks such as Friday afternoons off over summer, and leave packages that enable our staff to take meaningful time off
3. Develop opportunities in our key growth markets, such as the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland plus the Middle East.
As a global leader in population health software, what innovation opportunities do you see from the vast amount of data Orion Health has collected?
There are so many innovation opportunities within healthcare. I’m genuinely excited by what we can achieve in the next decade, and Orion Health is perfectly placed to lead the world in this field.
Once machine learning and AI are implemented to safely draw data from Health Information Exchanges and Digital Front Doors, we can begin to solve complex health issues before they arise.
For example, with machine learning, we could pick up that a user is more likely to get breast cancer one day. A DFD could inform them of the best ways to check for lumps from home via state-approved resources, prompt them to get regular scans, and show them the most direct ways to make these bookings.
It’s encouraging that technology is being developed that will improve some of the inequalities within the health system when it comes to regionality, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status.
Orion Health has transformed itself from a publicly listed ‘juggernaut’ into a business of start-ups that have fuelled profitability and delivered value to customers. How did you achieve this transformation?
For Orion Health, the rigid processes involved with being a listed company stifled innovation rather than fuel it. Orion Health was built on new ideas and moving at pace.
Upon delisting, Ian helped Orion Health move back to the start-up nature that let it thrive. Now, at Orion Health we are no longer management-heavy, we let small groups trial new and exciting ideas. This lets them produce solutions without having to jump through hundreds of tiny hoops to get there. Through this we’re coming up with better technology and more meaningful solutions, this is what’s key to our profitability.
Click here to learn more about Orion Health.
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