Dr Niamh O’Rourke, HIQA’s Deputy Director of Health and Social Care Standards, attended the European Social Network European Parliament Round Table in Brussels last month, and delivered a presentation about our national standards for health and social care.
High-quality health information is the foundation of a high-quality and safe health and social care service. Therefore, we are pleased to publish a set of new national standards this month which will improve how information is managed in Ireland’s health and social care services going forward.
The National Standards for Information Management in Health and Social Care were developed by HIQA and have been approved by the Minister for Health.
“Quality Healthcare Data in Ireland: A Revolution or an Evolution?” was the theme of the National Office for Clinical Audit’s annual conference which took place this month, and members of our Health Information and National Care Experience Programme teams attended the event where they presented posters on an array of topics.
In our role as the competent authority for regulating medical exposures to ionising radiation, we set clinical audit procedures and establish and review national diagnostic reference levels (DRLs) for medical procedures which use ionising radiation.
We were pleased to address the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health in recent weeks to discuss our work and role in health and social care.
Members of our team have been attending a variety of conferences over the last number of months, and used these opportunities to discuss and exchange ideas with national and international colleagues. For example, attending the recent National Patient Safety Office and European Social Network conferences among others.
The Recommendations on ICT Enablement of Older Persons Services were developed to address the COVID-19 Nursing Homes Expert Panel’s Recommendation (6.3) on the development and introduction of an integrated IT system for older persons services.
The fourth edition of the Catalogue of National Health and Social Care Data Collections is now available for use.
National health and social care data collections are repositories of routinely collected health and social care data in Ireland, including administrative collections, censuses, national routine surveys, and registries. They play a vital role by providing an overview of health and social care related issues and services in Ireland.
We have published a paper on four policy areas for consideration to ensure a rights-based approach underpins health information and eHealth developments.
Our Health Information Manager, Dr Barbara Foley, pictured above as part of a panel discussion on ‘Getting the basics in place: What are the key enablers needed to drive improvements in eHealth and health information?’ at last week’s Smart Health Summit 2022.
Left to right: Dr Barbara Foley; Neil O’Hare, Professor of Health Informatics, UCD and Group Chief Information Officer, Children’s Health Ireland; Linda Verine, Acting Digital Culture and Transformation Clinical Lead, Lancashire & South, Cumbria Integrated Care Board; and Raphael Jaffrezic, Chief Information Officer at Galway Clinic. Photo credit: Maura Hickey.
