PM Bill English experiences MAiHEALTH firsthand

Prime Minister Bill English getting the MAiHEALTH story from Dr Lance O'Sullivan.

Prime Minister Bill English already had a good idea about how MAiHEALTH worked when he arrived in Kaitaia on Friday.

He had been discussing it with instigator Dr Lance O'Sullivan "for quite a while," but last week was his first opportunity to see first-hand exactly what went on in a tiny office in Kaitaia's main street.

The town's MAiHEALTH 'pop up' virtual medical centre was actually the second to open its doors, following the South Taranaki town of Patea, which had been without a GP of its own for some time.

"Can you find me a shorter one?" was the PM's response to posing with Hawea Vercoe leadership programme's Quintin Moeke.

Patients there, and now in Kaitaia, present themselves to staff equipped with iPads, which they use to pass on information to Drs O'Sullivan or Joel Pirini in Kaitaia for diagnosis and, if required, prescriptions. In time, as the service expands, a broader cohort of "carefully chosen" doctors will be enlisted.

"It's an alternative to visiting the family GP," Dr O'Sullivan said.

"It is currently free to the patient, although we are going to have to look at how it will work long-term. We're seeing people with uncontrolled diabetes, hypertension, skin infections, a whole range of health problems."

South Auckland and the East Coast were the next target communities, while the concept would be tested in Fiji next month.

Mr English was impressed, saying the pop up clinic concept would be imitated by the rest of the country, and the world.

MAiHEALTH is an extension of the Moko Foundation's tele-medicine programme, launched by Dr O'Sullivan and his wife Tracy in 2014. And it was still evolving, he said, inviting Mr English to return to Kaitaia in 2019 to see the world's first international tele-medicine centre.

He had a gift for the Prime Minister, a flax kete with No 8 wire, duct tape and baling twine, symbolic of the courage and commitment needed to be innovative, and a reminder that what was being achieved in Kaitaia was not backed by anything "flash or expensive".

Mr English also spent time on Friday with participants in the Hawea Vercoe leadership programme, established in memory of the 36-year-old Bay of Plenty school principal fatally attacked in Whakatane in 2009.

"Some of the smartest, most innovative things done in this country come from here, and some of the most impressive leadership can be seen in this town, in many cases from its young people," he said.

Dr O'Sullivan said the rangatahi were in the midst of brilliance, some of the sharpest minds in the country.

"There is the Prime Minister, there's Hone (Harawira), then there's me, but the brilliance is you," he said.