Procurement is set to begin in Ireland for a national EHR, following government approval received this week, offering a single integrated digital health record for every patient in the country. Vendor shortlisting will now begin with a tender process, with the selected solution to undergo phased rollout across all health regions.
Noting that the procurement represents a “landmark step” in developing a modern and connected health service, Minister Carrol MacNeill said: “The National Electronic Health Record programme will be central to patients receiving safer, faster, and more integrated care, supporting clinicians and improving outcomes for everyone.”
The move toward a national EHR echoes the Irish government’s commitment to digitising healthcare records and information systems set out in the Programme for Government and Sláintecare, with a focus on data to follow the patient, supporting integrated care, and reducing admin burden. It will be supported by the Health Information Bill, offering a legal framework for sharing health information across the health service.
“The National EHR is central to our vision for a digitally enabled health service,” HSE CEO Bernard Gloster stated. “It will transform how care is delivered by giving clinicians the tools they need to provide timely, coordinated care and empowering patients with access to their own health information. This investment represents a seminal change in how our healthcare services will interact with patients long into the future. The benefits from an EHR system are many and impact on access, safety, quality of outcome and patient power. The impact of this decision by the Minister and Government will be visible for many years to come.”
Alongside the announcement, the government celebrates a number of milestones in its “Digital for Care” strategy, including reaching 122,000 registrations for the HSE Health App; the continued release of new functionality for the Shared Care Record programme; and the go-live of the Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System in five major maternity hospitals, meaning 70 percent of babies born in Ireland now have a digital health record.
To learn more about the plans for a national EHR, please click here.
More on digital health transformation in Ireland
Late last year, the Irish government published a report entitled “The Path to Universal Healthcare: Sláintecare & Programme for Government 2025+” (SC2025+), presenting its roadmap toward a high-quality universal healthcare system. It shares progress and priorities for 2025 and beyond, on digital projects including a health service mobile app, a national shared care record, virtual wards, a demand and capacity visualisation platform, and intelligent automation and AI.
The government also shared its Community Pharmacy Agreement 2025, outlining digital priorities across pharmacy IT integration, e-prescribing, data sharing, and vendor engagement, with a view to ensuring “community pharmacists are better equipped to contribute to national health priorities”. Pharmacy IT systems should be ready to integrate with core national digital assets such as the national shared care record and e-prescribing service, the government notes, as “the success depends on pharmacy’s ability to connect securely, share data in structured and coded formats, and do so in real time”.
Ireland’s Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, has shared the impact of virtual care initiatives, highlighting “significant progress” around patient outcomes and relieving pressure on hospital capacity. Two pilot acute virtual wards at St. Vincent’s University Hospital and University Hospital Limerick have accrued 1,500 admissions, reportedly equating to 13,800 virtual bed days. A further four virtual wards have now been launched at Our Lady of Lourdes Drogheda, Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore, Mercy Hospital Cork, and St Luke’s Hospital Kilkenny; with plans for a fifth at Galway University Hospital in early 2026.
