Health and care services

Healthlink: providing access to information

eHealth Ireland’s National Lead for Access to Information, Gemma Garvan explains how the National Healthlink project’s integration into the eHealth Ireland portfolio improves the experience of both service users and facilitators.

The successful delivery of a 21st century health service is underpinned by the vision for the future delivery of IT architecture. In Ireland, this vision is aligned with the HSE objectives, eHealth Ireland strategy and business capability requirements and which will enable integration and provision of information in a timely, reliable way.

For those tasked with rolling out the necessary architecture one of the major concepts underpinning their plans at present is the importance of ensuring that every health service user and facilitator has instant access to the relevant information they need. We must also ensure that this information flows through the system in the most efficient way possible. Whilst the HSE is a few years away from realising the full benefits of such a process, we are now in the planning stage, and getting it right will lead to greater benefits in the future.

With such a focus and importance placed on realising the benefits, it is clear to see why the national Healthlink project is the perfect fit for eHealth Ireland.

Established in 1995, the National Healthlink project provides a web-based messaging service that allows for the secure transmission of clinical patient information between hospitals, health care agencies and general practitioners. The developers of the system learnt a lot from worldwide best practice but architecture is unique to Ireland. The Healthlink online portal is secured with SSL, client certificates and uses the HL7 ANSI-accredited standard for information exchange. It has a proven track record in delivering IT solutions to GPs and hospitals and has been the cornerstone for many HSE ICT initiatives over recent years.

From its origins at Mater Hospital, where it was used to connect the hospital and GPs in the hospital’s catchment area, the project now has established links with 61 hospitals, 3500 GPs and hundreds of community healthcare facilities across Ireland. Annually it is responsible for 10 million individual exchanges of information.

In 2015, the National Healthlink project became the first operating group to join eHealth Ireland. Reflecting on the opportunities this has for the project, eHealth Ireland’s Lead for Access to Information, Gemma Garvan, who became involved with the Healthlink project in 2000, explains that as a best in class service the opportunities are immense.

“Joining eHealth Ireland has and will continue to allow the project to expand further and facilitate other professionals like Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists and Physiotherapists,” said Garvan. “It will bring their information to the fingertips of all professionals as well. Much like the Healthlink project, eHealth Ireland was established to meet the needs of the end users of the services on offer.”

Without the Healthlink system in place, GPs using a paper based system may be forced to wait up to seven days or more to get the required information about their patients. Having this information instantly available at their fingertips is very beneficial and is something they appreciate – this is of benefit to both patients and to GPs.

“Healthlink has been such a success because GPs love the system,” said Garvan. “They also appreciate the support they get to use the system and understand that it is a system that works very well and does what they need it to do.”

To find out more about eHealth Ireland and the Healthlink project visit www.ehealthireland.ie/Healthlink

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