Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party)
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513. To ask the Minister for Health further to funding commitments made in 2004 to develop national electronic healthcare records, how the electronic health records in St. James’s Hospital are currently funded; the cost to the State to expand this system to the rest of the country; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39005/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The electronic healthcare record (EHR) system at St. James Hospital was procured as a standalone system from one of the leading EHR providers, globally. The same solution was procured separately to provide an electronic healthcare record for babies and mothers in our maternity hospitals.

Now that it is deployed at St. James, funding is provided through the overarching annual revenue allocation to St. James hospital, to cover licence, hosting and other operational costs. Proposals to enhance the capabilities or scope of the EHR at St. James are considered under the capital sanction process and associated circulars from DPENDR 14/2021 ‘Arrangements for Oversight of Digital and ICT-related Initiatives in the Civil and Public Service’.

It is not possible to simply expand this system across the rest of the country as the EHR market is small but extremely competitive. As a public organization, the HSE would be obliged to go back to market to procure an EHR for other parts of the health service and under this scenario, it is very possible that any EHR vendor, including or other than the one used at St. James Hospital, could be successful. Such a procurement would also provide better insights into the actual costs of deploying EHRs on a wider scale. The ‘Digital for Care’ strategic framework provides a clear, stepwise approach on how best to expand the use of electronic health records in Ireland, ultimately resulting in one digital health record for each person in Ireland.