The Health Technology Laboratory (HTL) will provide two major and complementary functions:

• it will be a key national resource for testing of software compliance, performance and usability to greatly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of major health IT projects
• it will provide a development environment and showcase for IT innovations, enabling better orchestration of health information services and associated superior integration of care.

A major facet of the laboratory (and its mission with respect to the National Institute for Health Innovation overall) is to support research, education and training. Our goal is to support disidentified data extracts that allow researchers to better understand and evaluate the performance of our healthcare system and the health of the NZ population.

Synthesised patient data (ie, not tied to real individuals) will provide an ethically appropriate platform for demontrations of leading-edge technology and a realistic environment for student education as well as upskilling of healthcare professionals. It will also be a place to study the human factors usability of current and proposed healthcare technologies.