Professor M. John Kennedy:

Absolutely, we have electronic patient records so I can access a patient's record instantaneously from anywhere in the hospital. I do not have to wait for someone to find a chart and get it three days later. We have an excellent national system called NIMIS, national integrated medical imaging system, so I can access a catscan of a patient that was done in Galway if that patient comes to see me, which is tremendous. We need the same thing for clinical records. The only problem is when I go to look for the patient's records in Galway, for example if it is Mary Murphy, there might be 24 Mary Murphys and I have to find out which one it is because we do not have a unique patient identifier number, where patients would have one number that enables us to track their records. We need unique patient identifiers and electronic patient records as an absolute basic.