Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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510. To ask the Minister for Health the progress that has been made in implementing the Health Identifiers Act 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29890/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Health Identifiers Act 2014 provides for the establishment of systems of identifiers for clients and for healthcare providers, both professionals and organisations. Earlier this week, I signed the Commencement Order to bring into effect the relevant provisions to establish the Individual Health Identifier Register, to assign Individual Health Identifiers to individuals and to establish the related governance structure.

The Act provides that operational responsibility for the identifiers may be assigned to the HSE. Preparations for the implementation of the Individual Health Identifier are at an advanced stage in the HSE. The necessary management and organisational structure to enable the establishment of the register are being put in place, a development plan is currently being drafted which will give indicative costs for the lifetime of the project. Some technical implementation work has begun and a Privacy Impact Assessment has been commissioned and is nearing completion. When the establishment of the Individual Health Identifier Register is complete the next phase will be to allow for other health ICT systems in both primary and acute care to access the register in line with the provisions of the Act. This work will take time to complete and I must emphasise that this is primarily a patient safety initiative. The work will be done on a phased basis over a number of years.

It is important to point out that the roll out of a system of health identifiers for patients, professionals and organisations has no linkage with any eligibility for any type of health service or benefit. It is primarily a patient safety initiative and a fundamental building block for eHealth and ICT developments into the future.