David Cullinane
Question:699. Deputy David Cullinane asked the Minister for Health his plans to roll out eHealth and improve information and communications technology systems; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16973/20]
View answerTuesday, 21 July 2020
Questions (699)
Written answers
eHealth encompasses a wide range of digital supports to health services and health workers across multiple health settings and services nationally. The value of eHealth became apparent during the COVID crisis, as technologies were quickly deployed at scale to remove the risk of a surge to acute hospitals, to support new pathways of care and to help reduce the risk of infection to clinicians and patients.
During the COVID-19 response, new eHealth solutions were deployed to provide secure electronic transfer of prescriptions from GP surgeries to pharmacies, reducing the risk of potential exposure for the public and health workers, by removing the need to attend surgeries for some prescriptions and reducing waiting times in community pharmacies.
The Deputy will be familiar with the smartphone Contact Tracing App which has been developed by the HSE, enhancing manual contact tracing, informing of the spread of Covid-19 symptoms nationally and providing a publicly trusted source of Covid-19 related news, information and guidance. The App runs on Apple and Android phones and has been developed in line with EU guidelines. Adoption of the app is entirely voluntary and the use of all functions is consent based. Within 48 hours over 1 million people had downloaded the app and signed up as registered users. Electronic transfer of prescriptions has proven hugely successful, very convenient and avoids the need for otherwise well patients to attend GP surgeries, reducing risk to them, GPs and practice staff. The depeloyment of telehealth solutions has been accelerated over the past three months and has emerged as a significant eHealth benefit in response to Covid. These are just a few of the eHealth digital supports that were introduced during the pandemic that will continue to be developed and improved with a view to embedding these technologies in healthcare settings.
A unique, individual health identifier (IHI) is required to enable clinical systems to communicate with each other, in the knowledge that they are dealing with the same patient and sharing of data across the various medical settings where patients seek treatment. In parallel with building on digital advances made during the COVID emergency, planned developments will include the roll-out of the IHI for health care facilities and healthcare practitioners, the embedding of Eircodes into healthcare systems and the implementation of an electronic health record for the new children's hospital which is currently at procurement stage.
Additionally, a continuing programme of work is in place by the HSE to upgrade and install ICT infrastructure in locations nationwide in multiple health settings.