Patients’ access to records and information key priorities, says new HSE chairman

THE new chairman of the HSE has identified patients’ access to their own medical records and greater use of information technology as key priorities during his term of office.

Dr Frank Dolphin, who took up his position as chair of the HSE’s board in recent weeks, said yesterday that IT can bring about “substantive changes” in what the organisation is trying to achieve to provide more information to patients.

“I think we’re going to find that we will move to a stage where, for example, patient records will be something that will be accessible to the individual patient: that your records will be mobile with you, that when you go from one care centre to another those records will be there, that the information is available.”