The scale of the National Electronic Health Record programme is such that it is subject to Government Infrastructure guidelines, which are designed to ensure cost estimates and associated benefits are represented as accurately as possible, taking into account experience from other jurisdictions as well as developments here in Ireland. As such, the associated preliminary business case has been subjected to considerably scrutiny to date, and this will continue as the programme progresses through the open procurement process, which itself will inform more accurate estimates.
To date, the preliminary business case has been subjected to independent assessment under the External Assurance Process/EAP (that forms part of the Infrastructure Guidelines) and this review confirmed the business was compliant with all requirements. The business case was then subjected to Major Projects Advisory Group (MPAG) review. MPAG is a group of experts established by DPER to review PBCs in advance of approaching Government for a decision to process past Gate 1, and to proceed with more detailed designs and development of the PBC into the detailed business case (DBC) which itself is subject to further reviews prior to being considered under Infrastructure Guidelines Gate 2.
The Irish team are very well connected with developments in EHR deployments internationally and understand the background to all the programmes referred to in this PQ- and are factoring learning from all those programmes-plus others- into the detailed business case and the overall EHR programme.
