From 1 July 2008, The New Zealand Health Information Service (NZHIS) and HealthPAC services have been merged into the Ministry of Health's Information Directorate. Read more about the Information Directorate here
| Important Notice (6 Nov 08): Change to NZHIS Email Addresses Please note the old-style NZHIS email addresses, of the format firstname_lastname@nzhis.govt.nz, are no longer working. Emails sent to these addresses will not reach intended recipients and senders will receive a non-delivery notification. Please use the following email address format instead: firstname_lastname@moh.govt.nz |
The Ministry of Health receives data in many ways from many parts of the health sector, encompassing a high proportion of the various occasions on which New Zealanders interact with their health system. Use of the National Health Index numbering system for registering patients and the Health Practitioner Index system for registering medical practitioners ensures that the records are accurate while protecting the privacy of individuals.
The data is checked by us for errors, and stored in a number of computer databases. For a list of these databases and information about the types of data held on them, see the data and services section of this site.
One of the main parts of this web site is the technical documentation section, which contains detailed specifications that enable health services such as District Health Boards to provide their health data in an agreed format.
From the data it has available, the Ministry of Health is able to supply anyone who needs it with detailed and official information about the health of the country’s population. A number of statistical publications are produced each year, and more immediate provisional information is given in the health statistics section of this site.
The data held by the Ministry of Health is important for policy-makers because it provides vital feedback on the performance of the health system, while for medical researchers it can give an indication of trends in the prevalence of diseases and the effectiveness of treatments.
This page was last updated on 06 November, 2008