Mr. Muiris O'Connor:

The timeline that has been worked to up to now was the outcome of the set of deliberations across various Departments. All those Departments are open to a refreshment and reframing of the framework. I know strategic framework sounds a bit nebulous, but it actually will be an acceleration and a utilisation of the investment.

The Deputy asked great questions about the future-proofing of this Bill. One of the things that gives us comfort around the enduring relevance of the Bill is that we have not focused on any technology in particular in the Bill because we recognise that the real value lies with the data. We are confident that we can deliver real value for people, real value for health and social care professionals working across our system and organising the information in meaningful ways, irrespective of the technology.

The timeline the Deputy mentioned is absolutely depressing and is not acceptable to us because it places us at the end of this decade reviewing the children's hospital and getting approval to go to another site, and it would take a century to digitise services around the country. We are not accepting that. We want to adopt more national approaches. There are only 5 million people in the country, which is the equivalent of a large city in other countries. We are confident that we can organise information. The summary care record, the sharing of care records and focusing on the data will future-proof us.

Regarding wellness apps and so forth, we are focusing on the legislation, but colleagues are looking at the practicalities. However, there are great possibilities to build on a summary care record with a standard set of information as set out in Part 2 of the Bill. That could be the core central module of a summary care record. Other countries are doing interesting things where individuals can allow, with due consent, the wellness app to access their information and to be situated alongside it.