Roll-out of ‘shared care record’ due to begin in ‘late 2025’

A national shared care record (NSCR) will roll-out to “the first deployment area” in late 2025 under current HSE timelines.  

The vision of Sláintecare “can only be fully realised” by joining up largely fragmented patient records, according to HSE documentation on the NSCR.

The NSCR will be a digital solution that aggregates patient healthcare records from various electronic data sources, such as health information systems in hospitals, general practice, and community services. The records will be available for clinicians and patients at the point-of-care and self-care to inform health-related decision-making, according to the HSE. 

Information recently released on eTenders states that the HSE is seeking to appoint a suitably qualified operator to provide the NSCR. The initial 10-year contract, with an estimated total value of €40 million, will encompass implementation, configuration, integration, training, and ongoing support and maintenance. 

“The NSCR is being developed as a safe and secure way of bringing separate health information records from different health and care organisations together digitally in one place. It joins up information based on the individual rather than the organisation,” a HSE spokesperson told this newspaper. 

“The expectation is to make discharge summaries, referrals, radiology and laboratory reports available on a read-only basis to healthcare workers seeing patients in different settings…”

The NSCR has been “approved in principle” to go to tender and ‘request to participate’ documentation was released on 21 July.

“Subject to the length of the procurement, final funding approvals, and the implementation plan agreed with the successful vendor, it is anticipated that roll-out in the first deployment area will commence in Q4, 2025,” the HSE’s spokesperson stated.