Saving Lives!

Way back in September 2019 I was looking at expanding my business and I was well on the way when COVID hit us lat year. Everything changed in 2020!

For the most part of my CIOV work, I’ve been immersed in Primary Health IT, thanks to a consulting contract with South Link Health Services (SLHS). I have been very fortunate to have this contract as it has provided many work opportunities since I first started CIOV in 2018.

Since 2019, I’ve been helping SLHS migrate medical practices with their “cloud first” strategy for practice management systems. Lockdown was a very strange time for me being in a solo bubble but an Essential Services role with SLHS supporting Primary Health enabled me to get out and about and support front line health workers.

Most of us felt the same going into and living through the Level 4 lockdown in March last year. The speed with which it all happened, the incessant 24/7 COVID news coverage and the uncertainty with what lay ahead generated huge levels of anxieties for many of us.

"Saving Lives" was how a good friend of mine described what I was doing last year during the COVID-19 lockdown. It was rather a tongue-in-cheek comment as I had never thought of that about IT. I remember helping a nurse one day at a SLHS medical practice. She was performing COVID testing in the practice carpark and my help involved simply opening some doors so she could bring the tests back into the practice before sending them off for analysis. The nurse packaged the tests up for testing and arranged their pickup. I hightailed it home as soon as I’d finished my IT work!
That nurse was Saving Lives, I just opened the door!! I still felt very uncomfortable at the time after she passed by me in all her PPE gear after testing the patients for COVID. I threw all my clothes into the washing machine as soon as I got home and took a long shower!

Even now, with the world still in disarray more than a year after COVID hit, it's interesting to reflect back on the last 12 months and what we have been through in NZ. For all the pain and anguish of COVID, it has progressed elements of technology like video-conferencing faster and further that most of us would have thought possible.

Anyway, I’m still principally working in Primary Health which is incredibly rewarding. This work totally fits with my CIOV business strategy, "enriching our client’s businesses through innovation" by migrating in-house systems to the Cloud.

I am looking forward to the next IT challenges and developing CIOV where I can help my customers and potential customers with their businesses.