From the HSE’s point of view, this is an obvious path to go down, given that every citizen that interacts with it creates data as they move through the system in the form of medical or billing records. And things are changing, starting with new developments that will have a big impact, albeit for relatively small groups at the start.
“Patients with epilepsy in Ireland will shortly have access to their electronic healthcare records and an ability to communicate with their clinician. If you’re a haemophiliac in Ireland, you’ll be able to securely communicate with your clinician, you’ll be able to order new treatments and new drugs and have those monitored and delivered to your fridge,” said Corbridge.
“If you’re a maternity patient, by the end of Q3 of this year you’ll be able to look at your health records, communicate with your clinicians and update your record online.”
“So those are three areas where we’re testing, building knowledge and building experience,” he said.
Over the next two years, the HSE intends to roll out a patient portal as part of its electronic health record programme, subject to some government decisions being made.
“Those decisions have already been put in place around access to patient information so we’ve started work on a national portal for access to things like your own demographics. This will allow people to use a mygov ID to access their own individual health identifier information, to be able to consent for clinical research, to be able to opt in for organ donation. All sorts of things like that are in the pipeline,” said Corbridge.
Impediment
A major impediment to getting this done right from the start is that the HSE’s digital team today is made up of just 288 people, delivering digital services to a workforce of 110,000 in the HSE and a population of 4.2 million citizens.
“Digital in health in Ireland is still seen as an add-on, additional function but that has to change. We need to see it and indeed the minister Simon Harris does see it as the only way that we can transform the healthcare service,” said Corbridge.
“We have a minister who understands the importance of this but it costs money. IT isn’t free so it’s a case of building what we can afford to build and moving slowly forward delivering benefit as we go.”
There remain some significant barriers to adoption of greater and more sophisticated levels of online government services, chiefly cost and public apprehension around data gathering. However according to Aisling Keegan, Dell EMC vice president and general manager for Ireland, there is reason to be optimistic.
Replication opportunity
“The work of the eHealth Ireland ecosystem in helping to modernise IT systems across the health service is remarkable, and we have the opportunity to replicate that throughout many other public sector contexts to become a world leader in delivering citizen services with technology,” she said.
“Yes, there are hurdles that need to be surmounted to get us closer to where we need to be but three quarters of executives in the private and public sectors agree that a centralised tech strategy needs to be a priority and most would like to see incentives put in place for their organisations to invest more in IT infrastructure and digital skills leadership ranging from analytics, big data and data processing to Internet of Things technologies,” she said.
Keegan sees a conundrum facing public sector organisations that need to invest to compete and stay relevant in the eye of the consumer, but lack the adequate resources to do so.
Progress bar
“Lack of budget and resources is a factor, but it shouldn’t stop an organisation from moving forward. One consideration is how can you remove costs and reallocate resources to driving innovation rather than maintaining the status quo. We can help our customers on this IT transformation journey,” she said.
“From a budgetary restraint perspective if you can spread the spend on new technology out over a few years, it makes it much more manageable from a cash flow perspective. We connect customers who require full-service leasing and financing solutions with Dell Financial Services so organisation can get the benefit of the technology immediately and pay for it on a phased basis that suits them.”
It helps, she said, that the cost of technology is falling all the time and the latest powerful virtualisation and cloud technologies are having an impact on the bottom line.
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