Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 5 July 2022
669. Deputy David Cullinane asked the Minister for Health if he will outline the use of unique patient identifiers in the healthcare system; his plans to increase and expand the use of same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35400/22]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Individual Health Identifier (IHI) was used extensively during the pandemic and indeed everyone who received a Covid vaccination in Ireland had their IHI assigned to the vaccination record created for them at the time. This enabled the linking of records as people received multiple vaccinations (two doses for primary vaccination plus subsequent booster) and will continue to be of value as future boosters are offered to people. There were a lot of valuable lessons learned as the health system deployed the IHI at scale, including the importance of recording mobile numbers, email address and EIRCODE as part of the supporting IHI dataset and the significance of PPSNs as a means for people to readily identify their corresponding IHI number. Indeed the upcoming Health Information Bill will promote the PPSN as the primary identifier for citizens using the health service with the IHI embedded within the healthcare records themselves, as recommended by HIQA. Experience from the pandemic, and the national vaccination programme, has proven that the PPSN (along with name and date of birth) is the simplest way for health service providers to allocate an IHI to a clinical record. PPSNs and photo identification were used to identify users of the national vaccination programme. It provided a robust mechanism of allocating Individual Health Identifiers and subsequently issuing Digital COVID-19 Certificates (DCCs), to all those who received a vaccination. As a process, this is a potential basis for further deployments to GP systems, hospital Patient Appointment Systems (PAS) and the national maternity system in 2022.
Deployment of eHealth solutions and the joining up of health records from across the health system also requires the deployment of individual health identifiers (IHI).
