Ireland’s minister for health Stephen Donnelly has published the Health Information Bill 2024, designed to provide patients with increased access to their own information and providing a “clear legal basis” to establish a Digital Health Record across Ireland.
Additionally, the bill sets out a “duty to share” health information for patient care and treatment, greater protections around health information for primary use, and greater ease for the Health Service Executive to obtain health information for public-interest purposes.
The Department of Health reports that the bill is a “vital component” for the successful implementation of Ireland’s digital health framework, and also supports Ireland’s obligations under the European Health Data Space Regulation, set to come into force from autumn this year.
The bill itself is expected to progress through the Houses of the Oireachtas in the autumn legislative session.
Minister Donnelly comments that the bill “will transform how we access and use health information for care and treatment, as well as for important secondary-use purposes such as research and innovation”, and adds: “By harnessing digital, and unlocking the power of quality data, we are laying the foundations for an innovative, efficient, and truly modern health service.”
Digital healthcare in Ireland
Earlier this year, HTN interviewed Aislinn Gannon, general manager for digital health at Ireland’s Health Service Executive, about the programmes she has been involved in and the landscape of health tech in the country, including the launch of a telehealth roadmap and a virtual wards strategy as “two areas of priority”.
We also reported on the news that Health Innovation Hub Ireland announced eleven winners for its first Irish FemTech call to industry, which sought innovations addressing issues in women’s health. Winners included innovators with solutions such as apps to track symptoms, wearable solutions, and a chatbot for answers to questions on menopause; find out more here.
Digital records in focus
Last week, HTN highlighted an update from Norfolk and Waveney Acute Hospitals Collaborative as they secured £88 in funding and approval for their full business care for a shared EPR.
Also on the topic of shared system, we noted that Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust are to implement a new shared EPR.
Last month, we shared how University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust went live with its new EPR.
Earlier in the summer, we hosted a panel discussion focusing on how to take a pragmatic approach to digitising NHS records.
And we covered how University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust ran ‘Paper2Pixels’ events which saw staff across the trust helping to identify and streamline more than 1,000 paper-based patient records and forms for the process of digitising, ahead of the trust’s transition to a new EPR.
