Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator for raising this important issue. I welcome the opportunity to outline the current position. The Senator is referring to the ongoing implementation of the national medical laboratory IT system. As with all clinical ICT system deployments, patient safety is the most critical element, and I am informed by the Department that issues raised by the doctors are being addressed by the HSE. I will come back to the Senator on that, but as I have been informed today, the doctors' concerns have been raised and are being addressed by the HSE. All hospital labs in Ireland are independently accredited by the Irish National Accreditation Board. Investment in digital health technologies such as MedLIS supports the delivery of the Sláintecare objectives of integrated care, patient empowerment and improved safety, and sustainability in service delivery.

MedLIS is an important national programme that forms part of a wider investment to digitise the health system under the digital for care strategy. Recognising the need for reform, our programme for Government makes specific commitments with regard to the digitisation of the health service as a key enabler for modernisation and reform. As the Senator said in his opening statement, that is very important. It is our future and that is the way we have to go. Having a single lab record enhances patient safety, enables standardisation across all labs, and improves effectiveness and efficiency throughout the healthcare service. MedLIS is a national lab system intended to serve the needs of all lab sites well into the future. A report commissioned by the MedLIS project board to assess progress up to 2018 highlighted several findings and suggested a series of recommendations on how to improve delivery of the programme. Based on these findings, the HSE made a number of changes. Despite the impact of delays caused by the global pandemic and the cyberattack on the health service, MedLIS successfully went live at Beaumont Hospital in August 2024. One change that was needed following the cyberattack was the migration of MedLIS to a secure, cloud-based environment. Deployment of MedLIS at Beaumont Hospital had been prioritised due to existing risks associated with its legacy systems. The solution has played a significant role in advancing Beaumont’s ongoing digital transformation.

The MedLIS laboratory system deployed at Beaumont Hospital is from Oracle, a major international IT systems vendor. It is widely used throughout the world and the majority of users are happy with how it is working. The partnership and business relationship between the HSE and Oracle remains governed by the original contract signed with Cerner, now Oracle, in 2015. This contract underwent a review prior to its extension in 2022.

As with any large and complex technology implementation, there are elements that, post “go live”, will require improvement, optimisation and further change. The HSE is committed to following through on this optimisation work. Given the size, scale and complexity of the laboratory project, these issues have been very much as expected and are a testament to the close working of the project team and the laboratory teams across the hospital. The solution deployed at Beaumont is one of the most widely used hospital systems in the world and is used at over 1,500 sites. Because it operates differently from the system it replaces, it requires some changes in how people do their work.

As MedLIS is a national programme, this requires the alignment of processes across all sites. The team is actively engaged locally, working through system optimisation to streamline labour-intensive tasks and improve how the system works to benefit all staff on all sites.