Written answers

Thursday, 16 February 2017

Department of Health

Electronic Health Records

Photo of Louise O'ReillyLouise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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195. To ask the Minister for Health if there is a facility similar to the clinical communications gateway in the health service; if not, if his Department's e-health strategy has considered this, or if it is part of the digital package solution; if he will examine this facility; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7778/17]

Photo of Simon HarrisSimon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Clinical Communications Gateway that the Deputy refers to is a national infrastructure being used in the NHS and Northern Ireland for the electronic exchange of patient clinical information. The Clinical Communications Gateway is used to send and receivepatient identifiable clinical messages including referrals, prescriptions, diagnostic imaging, lab requests and results and monitor the progress of messages between care settings.

The health service in Ireland has built its own version of the clinical communications gateway, this is known as HealthLink, the National HealthLink Project and has been in operation for several years. The National HealthLink Project is a joint collaboration between the Office of the Chief Information Officer (HSE) and Hospitals throughout Ireland as well as Primary Care.

In 2016 the HealthLink team became part of the eHealth Ireland function in the Office of the Chief Information Officer in the HSE. HealthLink uses Health Information and Quality Authority standards to ensure messages can be passed around the health service digitally, it provides the capability to pass clinical messages such as laboratory test requests, test results reporting , image and diagnostic requests and referrals for a range of specialties. In 2016, over 17 million messages were transmitted mainly between Primary and Acute settings.

HealthLink has recently been involved in developing solutions around electronic referrals between primary and acute care settings. It builds upon the success of a pilot that was developed and implemented in hospitals across the South/South West Hospital Groupin 2014 specifically for referrals. The objective of theinitial project was to put in place an electronic general referral solution that was scalable, measurable, accessible, robust and transparent. Using the e-referral solution, a GP can submit a referral electronically directly from their practice management system to the hospital in question using the HIQA-approved referral form and immediately receive an acknowledgement confirming receipt of same. Later phases of the project ensure that the GP practice system also receives a response message once the patient has been triaged and enables the referral to be processed digitally within the hospital.

A programme to make it possible for all acute hospitals to accept (General) referrals electronically was initiated in Q1 2015. By December 2015, over 50% of all acute hospitals were live, including three complete hospitals groups, namely HSE South/South West, Saolta and the University of Limerick Hospital Group. As of May 2016, all public hospitals were live and can receive HIQA compliant general electronic referrals from GPs. Another phase of development proposes that general eReferrals can be sent to a single Central Referrals Office at a hospital group level, as is the case with the University of Limerick Hospital Group eReferrals, in order to facilitate a more effective management of eReferrals in terms of waiting times and capacity constraints at a hospital group level. Further expansion of the potential for eReferral is being examined including the potential for patients to see their referral using patient portal technology. HealthLink will also be the infrastructure for the movement of information relating to the Individual Health Identifier and the new national laboratory information system which are scheduled for implementation in 2017. My Department is currently evaluating a business case for a national electronic health record for Ireland to significantly improve the digital opportunity for healthcare. HealthLink will be a critical part of the development of digital health services into the future.

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