Digitisation of health service will be clinician-led – HSE Deputy CEO 

The digitisation of the health service will be patient-focused and clinician-led, the HSE’s Chief Technology and Transformation Officer and Deputy CEO has stated.

Speaking at the recent Technology in Healthcare Summit, Mr Damien McCallion said the purpose of the Digital for Care 2030 framework is “to ultimately improve outcomes; it’s not about implementing a system”.

“We have a phrase now – patient-centred, clinically-led, operationally driven, and digitally enabled,” he said. “We’re driving that for every single project. Have you got the clinical leadership? Is it operationally driven? Have we got the right people on board? Are patients involved? And have we got the digital resources that can make that happen? And if you get that combination, my view is that’s the sweet spot that will allow projects to be successful.”

He continued: “They must be clinically-led. This will require a level of standardisation of practice that we probably haven’t had to look at across the health system before. It’s not the system, but the practice and the workflows have to be reasonably consistent or else we’re going to run into all sorts of problems. And if you look at countries that have had difficulties, that’s generally at the heart of the issue rather than vendor or technology.”

Mr McCallion said the HSE’s focus is to accelerate the delivery of “the big programmes that can really lift the system”. The biggest will be a national electronic health record (EHR) system.

“This is a big project, certainly €2 billion to €3 billion over 10 years. This is not a small investment. It’s very significant. That’s not just the product. That’s all of the staff, all of the change,” he said. “If we don’t make the investment and take some pain, we won’t get the return at a later point.”

The EU has set a deadline of 2030 for Member States to have EHRs accessible to all citizens. Mr McCallion said the HSE expects to bring a business case to Government in the coming months and will then proceed to tender.

“What I would say is, our driver shouldn’t be the fact that we have to meet a regulatory compliance. It should be that we’re looking to drive the system in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and safety. They need to be the things that most of these programmes need to be driven by. Yes, we have to hit EU targets, but that should be secondary,” he said.

Mr McCallion added that the HSE, the Department of Health and the Government are fully committed to delivering the goals of the digital health strategy, and recognise that considerable investment will be required.

“We’re fully aligned on this. We’re not always fully aligned on things, but we’re absolutely aligned on this in terms of delivering and implementing it,” he said. “All parties are committed to it. There are still battles politically and publicly over the state of certain services or the investment levels. You see that played out every day and every week. But there’s a commitment to a joint approach across all the parties to this.”