Great day today attending the Health Informatics Society of Ireland 2014 Annual Conference.  In our Data Protection for Healthcare workshop together with Sarah Reade, Lead ICT Project Manager, Saint John of God Hospitaller Ministries and Jim Gregg, Irish Computer Society, we had a lively discussion on the data protection challenges faced by medical practitioners in the context of research and access requests.

We also discussed the draft EU Data Protection Regulation’s long road to reform and the overdue arrival earlier this year of the Health Identifiers Act 2014.  The Health Identifiers Act 2014 provides a legislative framework for implementation of a unique health identifier system for individuals and health service providers.  While the legislative framework is there, the Act has not yet been commenced and will only be commenced on a phased basis as an when required.

We did hear rumoured that the Health Information Bill is due to be on the agenda early next year but time will tell.