Patients at risk as Ireland lies far behind on digitisation of health services - expert

Ireland is lagging far behind other European states in digitising its health service for the benefit of patients, according to the most senior Irish official in the European Commission’s health directorate.

Some member states were far in advance of Ireland on eHealth, John F Ryan told a seminar organised by the Institute of International and European Affairs.

“They jumped on the bandwagon years and years ago. They took advantage of investment funds, and put in place the legislation. I have not been aware that the same thing has happened in Ireland.”

Electronic health tools can allow expertise to travel virtually, Mr Ryan pointed out, for example by transferring prescriptions between countries or by allowing the sharing of medical scans.

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“It should have happened years ago. It’s absolutely essential that we use some form of unique patient identifier,” said Prof Mary Horgan, president of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. “Our country is changing hugely demographically and we need to meet the needs of our new Irish and the older population. We cannot do that without good data.”

Prof Paul Browne, a consultant haematologist at St James’s Hospital, said it “beggared belief” that the issue had not been prioritised by Government. “We will be deeply exposed as a country in terms of our credibility to engage in innovation and development without immediately addressing this.”

Mr Ryan said that when he goes to the doctor in Luxembourg, where he lives, “there’s literally no paper in the office. Everything is on screen because they have an electronic paper record. The doctor can see when I was last at the dentist or when I last had a colonoscopy.”

Digitisation of health records is a patient safety issue, he said, because electronic records can “track where the problems are”, such as with the stewardship of antibiotics.

Another speaker at Friday’s event was former HSE director general Tony O’Brien, who said the lack of progress on eHealth was a “clear and present danger” for patients. If Ireland continues to lag behind other countries it will fall further behind them on research, he warned.

Mr O’Brien said governments have shown “hesitancy” on eHealth due to cost and privacy concerns, though last year’s cyberattack on the HSE’s systems may have triggered a new approach.

Prof Browne expressed concern about the gap between approval by the European Medicines Agency of a drug, its marketing authorisation and the timing of its availability to patients. He drew attention to a “disturbing trend” over the past 10 years whereby access to some new treatments in Ireland depends on the ability to pay of a patient or their insurer.

New data shows a “phenomenal” improvement in the survival rate for one form of blood cancer, he pointed out, and this was because access to a new treatment had been provided to patients in the community more than 10 years ago.

“If we allow access to these drugs to be driven by particular communities or cases rather than having a coherent approach, we’re going to have more challenges,” Prof Browne said.

Highlighting the work of the EU in health, Mr Ryan said health ministers were currently discussing the expansion of screening programmes to cover prostate and lung cancers, as well as the expansion of existing levels of breast cancer screening.