HSE to spend €5m on dental IT system amid calls for more public dentists

However, while the Irish Dental Association welcomed the much-needed investment, a spokesman said the real issue for dental patients is the shortage of public dentists. File photo: PA

The HSE has tendered for a €5m IT system to support dentists focused on upgrading the digital dental treatment records system in place since 2019.

However, while the Irish Dental Association welcomed the much-needed investment, a spokesman said the real issue for dental patients is the shortage of public dentists. Since the National Dental Record and Information System was set up, patient charts can be easily accessed by their own dentists or a new dentist if they move or have an emergency.

It held charts for almost 874,000 patients with contributions from over 750 staff when first opened, mainly children or people living with special needs, the HSE said at the time. This system is now “due to move to end-of-support status”, the tender states.

The new system will “provide a single national database of dental service information across all Regional Health Authorities,” it states. This must be able to interact with any existing digital records in other parts of the HSE as well as plans for future digitalisation.

A spokesman for the Irish Dental Association said: “Any investment in technology has to be welcomed.”  However, he said: “The problems with the public dentistry programme are far greater than technology.

“There’s been a consistent hollowing out of the service, we have 75 less dentists in the service than we had 15 years ago. The number of patients who could be seen has increased since then by almost 25% because the population is increasing.” 

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The IDA estimates that 100,000 children missed out on dental screening in schools last year. “We have been saying to even get us back to where we were 15 years ago, to take account of the population increase, there would need to be 100 extra dentists employed in the service,” he urged.

In recent years public funding was used to send children for treatment under private dentists and there has been talk of expanding this. The IDA recently met with the Department of Health to discuss children’s care and uncertainty for dentists concerned that the service is moving towards privatisation. 

“We hear from the dentists who are on the interview panels that we are getting fewer and fewer credible candidates,” he said, linking this to the lack of security. "If you are an optimist you think ‘if they are investing in IT there must be a future for the service’, but there are fewer and fewer dentists providing the care and more and more patients so dentists are under horrendous pressure.”