Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator again for raising the topic of diabetes. It is incredibly timely, especially in view of the fact that we celebrated World Diabetes Day last Sunday. I am taking this question on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly. Some of the questions the Senator asked reach into other areas of health and I will hopefully get the chance to respond to them when I have read the prepared statement into the record.

Diabetes is a complex condition that has a profound impact on the quality of life of people living with it. If not well managed, it can lead to debilitating complications. The increasing prevalence of diabetes poses a major challenge to our health service, including increasing costs driven primarily by hospitalisation and treating associated complications. Management of the condition is required across the entire spectrum of healthcare delivery. This includes self-management support, care delivered through general practice, community specialist care and hospital inpatient specialist care.

Currently, as the Senator said, Ireland does not have a national diabetes register. As a result, there is no accurate figure for the number of people living with the condition. It is acknowledged that the absence of a register represents a barrier to improving care for individuals living with type 1 and type 2 diabetes here in Ireland. The establishment of a register would help tackle the prevalence of the condition and measure both outcomes and the cost of care and planning for future services. In September 2019, Sláintecare’s integration fund was allocated to the HSE to design and procure a national diabetes register demonstrator product and develop a full specification plan for a such a register. It was intended that the register would be in place by 2021. However, the project was paused because it was dependent on the input of expertise of key HSE staff who wore redeployed to deal with urgent and ongoing Covid-19 work.

The national diabetes register, along with other disease-specific registers, is now being considered as part of a wider review of Ireland’s health information strategy and legislation in light of lessons learned in recent times, along with a substantial increase in Government investment in eHealth. Such registers capitalise on the unique identification of patients and the subsequent data linkage opportunities this enables. When in place, they will operate as virtual registers and will use existing health and social care records to enable monitoring of the incidences and prevalence of the disease in Ireland. The virtual registries will identify people with specific diseases and their data will be extracted from various systems, such as hospital inpatient and outpatient records, laboratory tests and pharmaceutical data collection. Each vital registry will be allowed to require and request the provision of relevant information for health and social care organisations and anyone providing a health or social care service in order to ensure that each registry will have complete coverage of its area of prevalence.

Virtual registries will allow for the development of disease-specific registries in a way that maintains comprehensive and up-to-date information that will meet the needs of many different stakeholders. The development of a national diabetes register will have a long term benefit on the provision of appropriate health services by providing reliable information to healthcare planners and policymakers.

It is important to acknowledge the role played of GPs and how up-to-date their information systems and technology are. It is incumbent on the Department, the policymakers and the HSE to ensure that a receiving ICT network that can match where our GPs are in that regard is put in place. We will not see the overall benefit until everything is pulled together. That is why there is reference to the stakeholders. It is incredibly important. Sometimes, perhaps what is needed is there already but we just need to expand it.