Sir, – Paul Cullen’s article highlighting the OECD’s report on the state of the HSE’s IT systems confirms the view that they are not fit for purpose (“Ireland ranks worst for digital health policies in developed world, says report”, News, November 7th).
Replacing today’s systems across the health sector is a challenge on a par with building the new children’s hospital.
We need a national health data ecosystem consisting of trustworthy data platforms, that deliver services for patients, GPs, consultants, clinicians, hospital staff and HSE administrators.
These platforms require a new mindset of data sharing and collaborative working and should be developed and deployed based on three fundamental design principles: security privacy and interoperability.
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Political leadership is essential and, as advocated in a recent World Bank data development blog, “a holistic delivery model that considers human, social, organizational, and technical factors with stakeholders from the public and private sectors and academia and with multidisciplinary development teams of software engineers, data scientists, lawyers, and social scientists”.
Building these trustworthy data platforms will take time and will be expensive. The alternative is an “Ah, sure it will do” attitude which shortchanges everybody. – Yours, etc,
Dr DECLAN DEASY,
Castlebellingham,
Co Louth.