Feb 18, 2021 1:19pm
New Zealand has invested in health data science collaborations, particularly through a public-private partnership called Precision Driven Health, that puts clinicians, data scientists and software developers together to develop new models and tools to translate data into better decisions. (Getty/andrei_r)
New Zealand, an island country of five million people in the Pacific, presents a globally-relevant case study in the application of robust, ethical data science for healthcare decision-making.
With a strong data-enabled health system, the population has successfully navigated several challenging aspects of both the pandemic response of 2020 and wider health data science advancements.
New Zealand’s diverse population comprises a majority of European descent, but major cohorts of the indigenous Māori population, other Pacific Islanders and Asian immigrants all makeup significant numbers. Further, these groups tend to be over-represented in negative health statistics, with an equity gap that has generally increased with advances in health technology.