‘Digital for Care: A Digital Health Framework for Ireland 2024-2030’ was launched this week The new digital health strategy faces the risk of lacking the imagination required to overhaul the health service, the former head of digital transformation in the HSE has said. Speaking to Irish Medical Times after the publication of the long-awaited Digital Health Framework this week, Prof Martin Curley welcomed the plan but added that how it is implemented will be a major challenge for the health service. Referring to the previous eHealth Strategy for Ireland , published in 2013, he said that the fact that it hasn’t been implemented showed that there has been a “massive gap between the level of ambition and aspiration and delivery, and I don’t think that has changed.
“HIQA in 2021 published a report talking about the urgent need for reform and that the eHealth agency should be separate from the HSE,” he said. “I think this would be the right thing to do because, unfortunately, the HSE hasn’t been able to deliver anything electronic on record. “What the report does well – it talks about the what, but it doesn’t talk about how we’re going to do it.
It’s very unspecific on that.” Prof Curley resigned as the HSE director of digital transformation and open innovation in January 2023, describing his job at the time as akin to climbing Mount Everest in bad weather. He has since taken on the role of professor of innovation at Maynooth University.
In a statement.
