Ireland has been ranked a "beginner" and "clear outlier" by EU assessors with just five of its 47 public hospitals hold functioning electronic records
Ireland faces an uncomfortable reckoning over the state of its digital health infrastructure. Only five of the country’s 47 public hospitals have implemented their own electronic health records, leaving the republic ranked as a “beginner” by the European Commission and a “clear outlier” by its own Department of Health in assessments of citizen access to digital health data across the European Union.
The findings, detailed in a new research note published by the Irish parliament’s Library and Research Service, lay bare the scale of the challenge facing policymakers as Brussels prepares to impose binding obligations under the European Health Data Space regulation – a sweeping piece of EU legislation that will require member states to give citizens cross-border access to their core medical records.
The root of the problem is fragmentation. Decades of piecemeal IT investment across the Health Service Executive have produced a patchwork of incompatible systems. Pharmacy dispensing records, laboratory results and GP clinical notes sit in separate databases that are technically incapable of exchanging information.
