Ms Angela Fitzgerald:

I will make some general comments and will then ask Mr. Egan to come in. In HIQA we are in the process of replacing our digital system. We have been funded to replace the digital system that we have, which allows us to report and track reported events. In the context of the patient safety Act, the requirements around that are much stronger. We are in the process of preparing our own internal systems to support smarter ways of getting information, as the Deputy said. Alongside that, with specific reference to the patient safety Act, there is an important relationship with the national incident management system, NIMS, which the HSE uses to report to the State Claims Agency in terms of making sure we can all talk to each other more easily, which is at the heart of the Deputy's question.

On the use of data, the Deputy referenced all of the different activities that can happen in a hospital. We can see from the work we do internationally that there is a need for us to become much more data-driven and that is the direction of travel in other jurisdictions. We are just doing our own review. One of the key requirements within that is to enable us to be much more agile around surveillance of data so we can be upstream of some of the events, but also to use data more effectively as part of our monitoring and regulatory roles. I might ask Mr. Egan to add to that.