Q&A: Paul Jurman, director of IT, Southern Health

With around 13,000 staff working across more than 40 sites, Southern Health is the largest health service in Victoria. The organisation covers parts of metropolitan Melbourne, as well as sites at Monash, Greater Dandenong, Casey, Cardinia, Kingston, Glen Eira, Frankston, Knox and Bayside.

The organisation’s director of information technology, Paul Jurman, sat down with Computerworld Australia to discuss what an average day involves for him.

What does an average work day involve for you?

Typically my day commences with a check-in meeting with my operations leads. We normally have quite a lot going on the commercial / project front this so is normally followed by strategy sessions with my financial support and legal teams. My day normally consists of a fair amount of stakeholder management and liaison both internal and external. Good commercial acumen and relationship management skills are critical.

What are some of the major challenges you face in the role of IT Manager?

Continually improving the value delivery by IT to the organisation while decreasing costs. Fostering a culture of innovation and realizing the opportunities that this brings. I think Steve Jobs, outgoing Apple CEO, summarised it well when he quoted Wayne Gretzky ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been’.

What are some of the recent projects you have been working on?

The replacement of a number of core enterprise systems such a Patient Administration, Financial Information Management, Rostering and Payroll. Deployment of medical grade wireless across our facilities, and deployment of Bring Your Own computer (BYO) systems. What are the three biggest issues facing IT Managers today?

On a strategic level the ever increasing demand for IT resources – in particular bandwidth and processing capacity, and increasing requirement for more agile IT to enable the business to exploit identified opportunities. At the coal face the prevalence of personal computing devices in corporate environments would have to be one of the biggest issues.

Favourite gadget?

My iPad, great productivity tool wouldn’t leave home without it.

Follow Chloe Herrick on Twitter: @chloe_CW

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

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