Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to discuss this Bill because the current system of largely pen-and-paper patient records has been a source of some disappointment and frustration, for clinicians and patients alike. When the general scheme of the Bill was before the Oireachtas committee on health last year, Mr. Muiris O'Connor summed up the matter up with the following comment: "The reality is that, at present, the health information system does not exist at a coherent and co-ordinated national level." This claim is backed up by the 2019 OECD study that found that, comparatively, Ireland lags behind other countries regarding the maturity of health information infrastructure. Other international reports identify the policy actions needed to transform the health information system in Ireland.

I cannot understand why the Government is introducing this Bill so late in its term and, worse still, ten years after the HSE launched the ehealth strategy for Ireland, which I have to note was never funded or implemented. While the Government explained that it was delaying full investment in electronic health records on the basis that it was waiting to see how it worked in the new children's hospital, that delay has wasted five years in progressing digitalisation. The truth is that the Government failed to provide a ring-fenced budget.

Relying largely on a pen-and-paper system serves neither clinicians nor patients well, nor does it allow for the optimum approach to planning for the needs of a changing population. This Bill is one thing, but what about the plans to implement the system? There is no timeline for delivering a comprehensive electronic health record system. What is the funding and delivery plan? How will providers such as GPs be connected and integrated with communities?

Sinn Féin has a strategy with the express ambition of providing patients and clinicians with greater access to health information, improving patient safety, bringing the health service into the 21st century and improving productivity, efficiency and value for money. We will do so by means of a plan that would prioritise and develop secure data sharing across primary care and hospital providers, from referral and waiting list systems to a patient app and remote monitoring. This will be built gradually but consistently as trust is proven in complex health information systems. It will be backed up by a multi-annual funding framework to ensure the creation of a digital transformation fund that will ring-fenced from the health capital budget and driven by the Minister for Health and an assistant secretary in the Department of Health. We have devised a strategy and funding paths supported by accountability. I really must question why this Government is not taking advantage of our vibrant technology sector to develop such a system, opting instead to leave us lagging far behind in the digitalisation of our system. We may be in opposition but, unlike this Government, we have a plan.

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