Dr. Orla Healy:

I thank the Deputy for his question. His point is well made. Clearly, the linking of individual patient records that exist in multiple locations is important. A level of automation has occurred in recent times, as evidenced by the impact of the cyberattack last year. That clearly demonstrated how automated our systems have become and the level of electronic records we have in the system. It is acknowledged that when people visit various sites, separate records are maintained on all those sites. The ultimate means of linking all that would be to have a unique health identifier for patients in order that there is a single record number across the board and that the use of that identifier would ultimately lead to an electronic patient health record. In some services we have that facility. For instance, maternity services have an electronic patient health record and people can seamlessly access their information from site to site. As I said, however, that is a huge undertaking for the health service and is very much linked to the electronic patient health record. In the absence of that record, we have a number of other systems and actions - for instance, medication. In my directorate in quality and patient safety, we have a no-ask check campaign whereby we encourage patients to keep a record of their own medication, so we engage with patients as partners in-----