Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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94. To ask the Minister for Health if she will provide an update on the implementation of ‘Digital for Care: A Digital Health Framework for Ireland 2024-2030; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [63883/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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Digital for Care sets out a very clear strategy for the digitisation of health services between now and 2030. Published in May 2024, we are already seeing evidence of real progress, and our investment in Digital for Care translate into tangible benefits for patients and staff.

Digital for Care supports the Programme for Government, which makes a commitment to ‘Continue to work towards the full digitisation of Irish healthcare records and information systems’. To deliver on this objective we are making specific allocations of funding for digital health within the €9.25 billion provided for health infrastructure and digitalisation under the National Development Plan for 2026–2030.

Digital for Care also supports other Programme for Government commitments such as the establishment of a National Electronic Prescribing Service, which has now gone to tender and will be procured in 2026.

Reflecting the pace at which AI is moving and the potential this holds for health, the Programme for Government promised the development of an AI strategy specifically for health. Under ‘Digital for Care’ my department and the HSE worked closely this year to develop this strategy which is based on the safe and responsible use of AI, broad stakeholder engagement, industry insights and international developments. This work is now complete, and I will be launching the resulting ‘AI for Care’ strategy very shortly.

Finally, Digital for Care proposes a three-step approach for the delivery of digital health records for all, and for the empowerment of patients through greater access to their own health data, digital health services and trusted sources of health information.

Step One is the delivery of the HSE Patient App. The App went live in February and will constantly will rapidly evolve and improve through successive releases on the App store, with a new release approximately once per quarter.

Step Two is the delivery of the National Shared Care Record as a means of pulling together patient data from existing systems and making it available to clinicians at the point of care. The technology that underpins the Shared Care Record was procured at the end of 2024, is currently being configured and will be piloted in the south-east region by the end of this year.

Step Three is the delivery of an enterprise level Electronic Health Record system across all six health regions. Whilst this is a very significant undertaking, Northern Ireland has proven it can be done, having just completed a very similar programme for a population of 1.8 million people. The preliminary business case for the enterprise EHR has now been developed, has been assessed as fully compliant with Infrastructure Guidelines and will progress to pre-tender stage, subject to consent by Government.