what's the point of paper format hospital patient records?

Because it is difficult to view multiple pages of documents simultaneously on a computer.

It's harder for Russian hackers to encrypt paper documents.

We don't have Electronic Health Records (EHR).

There is a plan to slowly implement it, starting with ePrescribing.

I think a law was passed to allow for health identifiers.

It also happens here when HSE was hacked for a ransom.

It's kinda ridiculous though from a hacking point of view. How sensitive is most people's health data ?

Also, it is possible that each patient (or a family) has their own private key to encrypt/decrypt sensitive data when they/family member is in the hospital or if a doctor requests it.

Also, it should be possible that anyone can share anonymously their health data globally so that large sets of extremely useful data is available for research.

Why does every doctor, nurse, consultant on the hospital journey need to ask the same "tell me what happened " storey and take the same notes.. it's in the computer? Well it should be..

That's an intentional policy , and it happens even when the records (paper or electronic) are right there in front of the doctor. It has two functions.

First, the medic wants to see that the story you tell is the same as the story in the records. A regular and occasionally disastrous problem in medical practice is treating one patient based on what's in the records of another patient, because the wrong record has been handed out or called up. The medic needs to confirm that the record in front of them is your record.

Secondly, in many cases the medic wants to hear the history from you. There may be details which have not made it into the records, or you may mention something that has happened, or has intensified, or whatever, since the record was created. The records are important, but they're not the best information avaiable; they are someone else's record of their interpretation of what you said on a previous occasion. What you say now, in person, trumps that.

I'm with you 100%"on this, and I know exactly where you're coming from. Back in the early 90s I was tasked with making a manufacturing company paperless, and within eighteen months it was achieved.

But not before we had many a battle with the old guard who loved their four part carbon copies and their intrays. The mindset had to be changed, weaning the old timers off their intrays and onto their computer terminals. People still had the option to press the print button and the Oki printer would oblige, but the default became paperless by 1995.

Not in this country, I hasten to add.

The new childrens hospital is the pilot site for the new electronic health file.

https://www.childrenshealthireland.ie/about-us/new-childrens-hospital/ourchildrenshospital/project-ogham/

In august the company I work for was hit with the crowdstrike outage. I couldn't work for half a day, whatever. The important thing is production in the factory had paper backups of documentation and could continue. Half a day loss there would cost millions and have knockon effects for months.

Agree with this; I had a lot of medical intervention this year, tests, surgery, follow on treatment etc. Each consultant I met would ask 'tell me about your journey so far' - the notes would be in front of them.

Had to wonder about how this filters back to your GP; I hadn't been referred by my GP and happened to be in with him the other day - he knew nothing about what I had been through. Only when I mentioned it in passing he looked puzzled and started opening up letters/ correspondence that had been attached to my chart (probably from admin staff)!

Having electronic records will certainly help the HSE to monetise patients records as the NHS in the UK has done.

Did you intentionally use " did the State a great service " expression there?

To me, the reason for so much paperwork in hospitals is simply that 1) the medical/healthcare sector is very rigid and slow to change, 2) the HSE lack IT staff competence (I've heard some stories!!), and 3) any move to a paperless system would mean a lot of unionised admin staff would become redundant.

On this last point, in my latest dealings with the HSE, I receive appointment notifications in the post which are printed in colour (mainly to facilitate an ever-changing HSE letterhead design!), but... while the actual appointment date and time are automatically printed on the letters, these details are then manually highlighted by an admin staff with a highlighter marker. Just changing the format of the text in the appointment letter template so that it has a bright background fill colour would eliminate the questionable need for any admin staff to be manually highlighting the appointment times on all outgoings letters! Furthermore, this would then mean that the letters could be automatically enveloped by machine etc. and thus eliminate another manual admin task!

There is just so much inefficiency in the HSE like the above example. But unfortunately the unions will always take arms against and prevent any improvements or technology advancements...

HSE have been working on Electronic Health Records for close to ten years now. The first 'digital baby', born with an EHR from birth, must have started school by now.
On the vague possibility that anyone is actually interested in the facts of what's happening, there's lots of information in the public domain, starting at

The bad news is that if you want to speed up the roll out, you're going to have to increase spending on those dreaded 'HSE administrators' that people spend their days on Boards giving out about, as they are the people who build, support and manage these systems

A lot of paper work is tedious, unnecessary only because to prevent errors or scams. Same like house keys or car keys. If whole world was honest, it would all work efficiently. Also not to forget GDPR is important, patient data, and so on, and has to be handled with caution.

Like others here already mentioned , electronic records are super efficient, saves times, labor, etc but lot of old methods are still in place because a number of reasons it could also included they are either not IT trained, or IT support is not in place. Notes making is simpler on papers for some who are not IT proficient, one example.

This is one big reason, for long waits.

a lot of crucial industries like transportation, aviation, construction…. keep hard copy records in tandem with electronic records.

Started using handheld PDAs in a job and about a year later the manager… “ ok, we can still use the PDAs to do our work but we need to go back printing the work reports / records too and filing them for x months…”

This was apparently at the behest of the industry regulator who wanted / needed everything backed up in a secondary manner….in case whatever server or cloud was hacked , compromised or corrupted….don’t know if that actually happened somewhere else or was just a proactive thought on their behalf but it made sense. Even is it was an extra 20 minutes of printing & filing at the back end of a shift for us.

Digitisation is being mandated by Europe now. Read up on the European Health Data Space. It means your records will be available to doctors in other EU countries to treat you when on holiday. Also handy for treatment at home in different places.

Don't be so bloody sarcastic, they are using the latest and greatest available technology.

It's even easier with digital records.

A paper record can't be hacked. If a system is hacked and suddenly a company has access to every person diagnosed with a certain condition, they can try to sway people away from Western medicine through targeted ads online and phone calls, or even push certain medications on people.

Imagine being diagnosed with cancer and the ads on your phone are naming your hospital or even your doctor as untrustworthy, and recommending you drink their herbal tea as treatment instead? There are people who don't have the media literacy skills to even identify ads online, never mind which ones to trust.

+1, except paper records can be "hacked", it has already happened. The people responsible weren't genius Russian criminals but urban explorers

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/hse-facing-inquiry-into-two-leaks-of-patient-data/a1892203190.html

Also, urban explorers accessed paper records in St Loman's in Mullingar, the HSE said that this wasn't a GDPR breach because the records related to dead people. So that's grand then.

A massive advantage of digital records is the ability to summarise and report on medical conditions for patients. Any Healthcare IT system should have powerful MI Reporting. I am always interested in the system my GP looks at when I visit; he seems to have different tabs and the ability to open up communication from Consultants from scanned documents. Had bloods done recently and he was able to compare to last years results instantly. A good medical software package isn't just a set of word documents uploaded