Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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66. To ask the Minister for Health the status of an evaluation being undertaken by his Department in respect of the business case for a national electronic health record, EHR; the time it will take to deliver a full EHR; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11892/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to improving the position of eHealth and ICT in the health delivery system as highlighted in the specific Programme for Partnership Government commitment where it is stated that “We will mandate the HSE to engage strategic partners to help with the planning, financing and roll-out of a 21st century ICT health infrastructure, working towards the universal use of data to improve integrated care and outcomes across primary and secondary care”. It is also noteworthy that the Oireachtas Committee on Future Health in its 2nd Interim Report in January 2017 noted that all stake holders that came before the Committee highlighted the need to develop electronic healthcare records in the healthcare system. In 2013 my Department published an eHealth strategy which outlined a way forward to improve the use of information technology including electronic healthcare records to support health care efficiency and importantly patient safety.

In order to improve the penetration of ICT across the health services and to provide an integration capability to support new models of care, significant new systems deployments, that can provide the necessary patient information across the continuum of care, particularly between Primary/Community and the Acute sector, are now required. This is what the National Electronic Health Record Programme business case is designed to do by providing, a structured, prioritised approach to the deployment of core technology to allow information to flow between the various care settings and also within those settings. It is a programme of work to make patient information available through technology to support improved patient care, safety and efficiency. It is not a single system or technology but a structured coherent programme to improve the quality and the availability of information across the system, facilitated by the Individual Health Identifier to provide the necessary integration. It is worth noting that the National EHR programme has been designed to specifically build on the investments to date in the current suite of systems such the patient administration systems, radiology and other ICT projects and to avoid a big bang approach and unnecessary disruption to current key systems. The EHR business case looks at 5 year and 9 year scenarios.

The scale and the scope of this investment programme is significantly larger than any other information technology programmes to date in Irish health care and the linkage with the provision of an electronic health record in the context of the New Children's Hospital is also being examined. Technology projects in the public sector using voted funds require a peer review process with the Office of Chief Government Information Officer (OGCIO) in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. My Department is working closely with the OGCIO and other stakeholders to develop a robust independent review mechanism appropriate to the scale and complexity of the investment required and its is also being considered in the context of the Mid Year Capital Review currently underway.