A major conference, presented by Engineers Ireland, will host the launch of Moonshot that will seek to make Ireland the world leader in digital health.
Efforts are being made to make our records more easily available from a healthcare point of view, so if we were in another part of the country and needed to go to hospital, the details would be accessible.
There is a system being rolled out in Ireland already, but a new digital platform is being presented at a major conference next week that aims to make Ireland the world leader in digital health.
Moonshot aims to take the medical records and put them into our hands, as we use our mobile phones for everything these days so why not something like this?
Speaking on The Pat Kenny Show, Professor Martin Curley, Director of Digital Health Ecosystems at Maynooth University, explained what the Moonshot project is and how they plan for it to work.
He shared: "Our health systems are actually breaking. We've worked with shortages, and unless we do something different, the systems are going to collapse.
"What this strategic Moonshot is about, we call it Mission 10x, and it's about building a 10 times better health system, which is empowered by digital.
"But it completely means actually reimagining and shifting where care happens from the hospital. We design a new solution which revolves around us and our mobile phone.
"There are so many things that we can do now on our mobile phone and there's a whole paradigm shift from doctor knows best, digital is democratising information, education and innovation.
"And we know what the future should be about is co-producing our health with our clinicians.
"One of the great clinicians I work with is Dr Frank Kenny who said, 'We know more about our pizza delivery status than we do about our electronic health record.'"
While there are elements of this solution already working in Ireland, it's not solving the problems at the moment, with waitlists doubling.
In fact, our healthcare system was discussed at a UN Digital Health Symposium which was chaired by Prof Curley, and American Physician Dr Lyle Berkowitz likened Ireland to the canary in the coal mine.
He highlighted that Ireland has lost 50,000 health workers, had added 8 billion in spending in eight years, but the output has only increased by 3.8%.
Prof Curley added: "What that means, as I interpret it, is the marginal efficiency of capital is approaching zero.
"So it doesn't matter how many new conditions we add, we're not going to improve. So this is a burning platform to actually design a totally new kind of health system."
The core of the programme is called SPINE, a Secure Patient Information Network Exchange, so the records actually will actually be accessible on your phone, but they'll actually be held in this SPINE.
So no matter whether you go to your GP, or you go to your pharmacy, or you're in the home, and you're getting data from your Fitbit, it all goes into the SPINE.
According to Prof Curley, today there are 20,000 patients in Ireland running on the SPINE, and all have very complex needs.
He continued: "In the past, all of those would have shown up either at the ED or would have gone to a GP. Today, just four of those people using the digital SPINE and a nurse-led trial, just four people end up in ED.
"On average, 16 go to a face-to-face GP, about 30 have virtual, and the rest are managed by the nursing."
Main Image: A doctor working on healthcare research with digital design on tablet Pic: Yuri Arcurs / Alamy Stock Photo
