Queensland Health Utilises SAP BTP to Fast-Track Digital Passport Initiative

SAP has partnered with Queensland Health to achieve a rapid 3-month turnaround on a key plank of the government department’s 10-year plan announced in May 2023.

The creation of a “digital passport” to be used by Queensland Health staff leveraged SAP’s Cloud-based Business Technology Platform (BTP). Working together, the 2 organisations achieved a minimum viable product by mid-August, ready for testing to commence.

The new virtual documentation procedure is a centrepiece pledge of Queensland Health’s 10-year plan, HEALTHQ32. Queensland Minister for Health and Ambulance Services, Yvette D’Ath, said it would “increase opportunities for staff mobility” and also help to expedite staff movements around the state to fill critical care shortages.

Queensland Health comprises 16 separate hospital and health services, each with disparate legacy systems and data storage protocols in place. As a result, the process of transferring healthcare professionals to areas of need has been difficult and frequently drawn out.

Queensland Health’s senior director of corporate technology services, Carlo Terribile, told the SAP NOW ANZ 2023 Summit in Sydney that SAP had been responsive to the expedited brief.

“We briefed SAP in February-March, they delivered a proof-of-concept for us in a pretty short timeframe, which was great. Then we started building in June, and went technically live [in early August],” he said.

Terribile’s corporate technology services team is continuing to develop the product internally to further refine the digital passport for Queensland Health’s specific requirements.

With SAP BTP still relatively fresh in the Australia-New Zealand market, a key challenge exacerbated by the project’s short turnaround time was to ensure that privacy, data protection and liability issues could be mitigated.

“SAP is now in an area which is quite different to where it used to be,” Terribile said. “That was challenging and I think it’ll continue to be challenging as we start to adopt this and other Cloud platforms a little bit more.”

“We moved a little, SAP moved a little. We got there in the end.”

Terribile spoke on a panel at the SAP NOW ANZ Summit in Sydney in a session titled " Accelerate Your Business Innovation with SAP Business Technology Platform” alongside Richard Walsh of Endeavour Energy (NSW) and Sussan Lam, SAP’s Head of Innovation Experience.

He has more than 25 years’ experience in senior IT management and leadership roles in a range of public sector organisations, including managing large scale, complex enterprise solutions, and delivering significant transformation projects.