Tom Neville (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is welcome that the University of Limerick hospital group performed well in the context of scheduled care. However, we must be more proactive in the use of the available technology. In the public sector we always seem to be behind the eight ball when it comes to technology, whereas the private sector is often ahead of it. We need to foster a culture within the health service that embraces technology and uses it efficiently to, first and foremost, help patients on waiting lists. That would have a knock-on effect in assisting front-line staff, for whom I have the height of admiration for how they go about their duties and their commitment to their jobs. Ireland is noted for the use of information technology in the private sector. We were the largest exporter of software 17 years ago. The text messaging service is 20 years old, but still we are pushing, scraping and fighting to try to have a text messaging system up and running in the public service. It should have been up and running years ago. We need to have more interactive technological systems in place in hospitals. While the University of Limerick hospital group has been a good performer, 5,633 patients or 16% of the total did not attend their appointments in 2016. I do not know how many of them were no-shows from 2015 and who had come back into the system. We need to get behind the figures to have the necessary intelligence, data and analytics. That is what happens in every business that survives; it gathers analytics and data and uses them to drive strategy, policy and decision-making.

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