The challenge
Implementing a unified health record across a complex, statewide system required more than technology – it demanded transformation at scale.
SA Health set out to replace fragmented, paper-based records and disconnected legacy systems with a single, integrated electronic health record.
Impacting more than 36,000 staff across 76 sites, the transformation program required alignment across a highly diverse clinical and operational workforce. Hundreds of systems needed to be consolidated, while clinical practices, workflows and ways of working were fundamentally reshaped.
While the technology solution was critical, the real challenge lay in enabling consistent, safe and sustainable adoption across the system, ensuring the change translated into improved care delivery, not simply new infrastructure.
How we helped
The program was positioned as a clinically led transformation rather than a traditional ICT implementation – aligning stakeholders, embedding governance and enabling adoption at scale.
OCM was engaged as Business Change Lead over a three-year period, guiding the design, integration, and implementation of the statewide solution. Working in partnership with SA Health, we positioned the program as a clinical transformation, ensuring technology acted as an enabler of better care rather than the driver of change. This positioned clinicians at the centre of design, engagement and implementation activities.
We established a comprehensive Program Management Office to bring structure and discipline to delivery across the system. A clinically endorsed system wide governance framework enabled clear accountabilities and collective decision-making,, providing the structure required to safely manage the large-scale change across the system.
Through close collaboration with clinicians and administrative staff, we led design processes that informed more than 400 clinical order sets and supporting documentation. Future-state workflows were developed and tested through immersive prototypes, providing practical insight into how the system would operate in real settings.
To support adoption, we delivered extensive engagement and readiness activities across clinical and non-clinical staff across the system. This ensured people understood not only how to use the system, but how it would reshape care delivery and coordination.
Results that matter
Framing the program as a connected care initiative helped strengthen stakeholder alignment and support more sustainable adoption of change across the system.
OCM played a central role in positioning the program as a system-wide transformation rather than a standalone technology implementation. This shift enabled SA Health to move towards a fully integrated clinical environment, supported by standardised workflows and consistent patient information shared across previously disconnected systems.
Through sustained engagement, the program achieved strong organisational readiness and workforce buy-in, ensuring the new system was understood and supported as a clinical care reform initiative. The work also identified efficiency improvements and cost-saving opportunities, including the rationalisation of legacy systems.
Importantly, the program embedded change management, engagement and commissioning approaches within SA Health, helping build organisational capability with application beyond the program itself.
Our people
Jonathan Cherian
