David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In the previous session, we heard directly from the HSE. The missing link in all of this is the Department of Health, which has questions to answer as well. It certainly has questions to answer in respect of the business case we discussed earlier. I have engaged with senior representatives in the Department on this issue of integrating IT systems and rolling out unique patient identifiers and electronic patient records. We know that hospitals operate on different systems. I have experience in the area of disabilities, where, for example, children's disability network teams are operating from software for which the company cannot provide an update, which means they have to build an entirely new system. We have all these examples of failures, systems not working, different hospitals working to different systems and so on. We know all the difficulties that flags up. When I spoke to the Department on this, the fundamental question was whether to go for a single integrated system or, alternatively, interoperability, which is where there are different systems but they can speak to each other. Is that something with which the witnesses have grappled in terms of their research and consideration of this? Obviously, there is a cost. If it is a single system, it could be a single point of failure. We want to get to a place where systems are aligned as best we can. In the context of that clash, have the witnesses considered whether we should go for a single IT system across the health services that integrates all those multiple systems or is it more about interoperability?