Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank the Minister of State and the Department for putting together this overall plan for a new era. I thank the Bills digest office for providing a helpful 46 page document. I do not intend to whinge about the fact that I am being allowed to speak for just three minutes. We need to remember a few things in this context. The modern scenario for individuals and families involves a great deal of traffic across continents and countries. If one has a sudden health setback while one is away, one might need to access one's records from Spain or France. The electronic element of this initiative is good. We need to watch out for a few areas of it, however. We should not allow some of its commercial dimensions to over-impose on the delivery of medical care at various stages including diagnosis, care and follow-up care. Medicine and nursing are primarily about the person. We need to be careful not to be dazzled by systems, and their perfections or imperfections, in the way that is depicted in Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The integrity, security and updating of information is crucial if we are to join up the islands of information. We must be careful to ensure medical practitioners and delivers - doctors and nurses - do not start to have a casual reliance on what is easily available on the data bank. The likely diagnostics cannot be determined solely on the basis of an examination of where the patient has come from, and where he or she was at during the most recent assessment, as set out in the patient history. The face-to-face presentation sometimes shows that all the history is irrelevant because a new germ, disease or situation has arrived. I know that because two of my brothers are general practitioners and three of my sisters are qualified nurses. There is a great temptation to rely on the file or the history. The Minister of State, and his colleague in the Department of Social Protection, will be aware that all assessments in cases of appeal are now being done on computers. The assessors do not even look at the patient. That is very wrong. There is a need to look at the patient. I believe in having electronic files as a backup, but I do not think it is a good idea to do one's diagnostics on a computer.

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