Terence Flanagan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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569. To ask the Minister for Health if he will provide an update regarding the health information Bill; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14448/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Because of changes to the Health Information Bill since the general scheme was approved by Government, I will be bringing a revised general scheme to Government in the coming months, with a view to publishing the Bill this year. The Bill will support a number of health service goals by providing an enabling legal basis to:

- facilitate the development of information systems, information capacity, data quality and the eHealth agenda through provisions on health information resources, data matching and interoperability;

- promote an improved patient safety culture, in line with recommendations by the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance, in the areas of patient safety incident reporting, open disclosure of adverse events to patients and clinical audit; and

- encourage health research by providing for a new streamlined research ethics approval structure for health research not governed by statutory regulation and EU law.