Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We all acknowledge that the pandemic accelerated many reforms throughout the system, including in the area of digitisation, especially in health. These reforms have been worked towards over a period of time, but the barriers were cut through and they were made to happen over the past couple of years. We now need to embrace them and build on them as a foundation for further reforms into the future.

If one looks at the €75 million suite of projects for which we have secured funding from the European Union under our national recovery and resilience plan, e-pharmacy is key. The deployment of new pharmacy systems within hospitals will not only provide better visibility of medications, usage and cost, it will enable the possible extension of these systems for use as e-prescribing tools throughout many of our hospitals.

In addition, community e-health solutions will include delivery of ICT communications and technical infrastructure and a key project in health, which is badly needed, is an integrated financial management system. I look forward to seeing the HSE and the Department of Health advance that project as a priority over the year ahead.

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