Cardiovascular disease (CVD) Risk Assessment Tool

Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand provides a national standard Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Risk Assessment (CVDRA) Service which is accessible to primary and community care providers, and the public.

The Service generates the risk (expressed as a percentage) of a person (aged between 30 to 74 years, without prior CVD) having a serious cardiovascular event in the next five years. 

The Service, when used in a primary or community care setting, enables healthcare providers to assess the CVD risk of their patients.

This enables shared care planning and risk management conversations to take place between a patient and their healthcare providers (typically their GP or practice nurse).

The Service was developed based on algorithms specific to the New Zealand population. The algorithms were published in 2018 by the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland.

The Service complies with the Ministry of Health 2018 Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment and Management for Primary Care and the Ministry of Health 2019 HISO 10071:2019 Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment Data Standard.

The Service is currently used by GPs, nurses, and other primary healthcare providers to deliver CVD risk assessment and inform appropriate risk management.

Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand provides the Service free of charge to integrators in a form of an application programming interface (API).

Integrators operate a system which integrates with the API and appropriate practice management system to provide a user interface for end-users including GPs, nurses, other healthcare providers, and the public.

Integrators include PHOs, health IT service providers and other health organisations. The Ministry is working with various integrators across the health sector to accelerate the roll-out of this Service.

Adoption of the Service is voluntary, however, the Te Whatu Ora encourages this to improve the accuracy and consistency of risk assessments and risk management.

Use of a Te Whatu Ora endorsed service also enables health providers to issue standardised clinical advice and support, which enhances consistency of care for health consumers.

If you're a health provider and are interested to access the Service or want to know more about the technical aspects of it, contact our Integration Team at integration@health.govt.nz.

For enquiries regarding the clinical aspect of the Service, contact our Long Term Conditions Team at Ltc@health.govt.nz.