Medicines are the most common healthcare intervention within the health service and the use and complexity of medicines are increasing. All healthcare professionals, including General Practitioners (GPs), pharmacists, and consultants, work together to ensure the safe and appropriate use of medicines by patients.
eHealth is an umbrella term which describes a set of digitising technologies in the health domain and includes electronic health records, ePrescribing, and telehealth. The driver for the development of eHealth is its potential to promote the health of the people of Ireland and improve our health services.
The Department of Health identified digitisation, including ePrescribing, in the National eHealth Strategy (2013) as a key priority for Ireland to align with the vision of bringing improved population wellbeing, health service efficiencies and economic opportunity through the use of technology enabled solutions.
ePrescribing is also identified as one of the key critical eHealth and technology actions of the Sláintecare Programme. The digitisation of our health service and processes ensures that the right data about the right patient is available in the right place at the right time.
There has been widespread digitisation across GP and pharmacy practices for many years in Ireland with software vendors providing solutions in each individual care setting. However, many of these systems have operated independently of each other.
Legislative changes made in March 2020, in the wake of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, have allowed for the transfer of prescription details between GP and pharmacies via secure email, known as Healthmail. This has been a welcome efficiency in our health service, which we need to build on.
The vision for the National ePrescribing Project is to establish a single source of truth for prescribing and dispensing information for every patient so that all the information is in one place. This will:
• Facilitate safer prescribing and dispensing of medicines through automated and better access to medicines information.
• Facilitate patient knowledge of their medicines.
The Project has established a governance structure to ensure that citizens, health care professionals, regulators and other stakeholders are collaborated with during the planning and implementation of ePrescribing.
The National ePrescribing Team has been set up within the Health Service Executive (HSE) and can be contacted at eprescribing@hse.ie
The Department of Health is open to exploring any evidence based appropriately governed services, delivered by appropriately trained professionals which will support the delivery of the right care, in the right place and at the right time. The implementation of any such proposals necessitates prior engagement with a range of stakeholders and full consideration of all the relevant legislative and operational issues involved.
