Making Services Safer National Clinical Surveillance Infection Control System

14/05/2024

HSE Acute and Community Services, Technology and Transformation and AMRIC are working together to introduce a National Clinical Surveillance IT System for Infection and Prevention Control. The introduction of this software will help support surveillance of Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs) and will play a key part in the control of these infections.

Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs) means infection that is in some way related to you receiving healthcare. It can happen if you are in hospital or a nursing home or if you are in regular contact with hospital clinics, GP surgeries or other places where healthcare is delivered. These infections can range from relatively minor to severe and contributing factors are indwelling medical devices, contamination of the healthcare environment and transmission of diseases between patients and healthcare workers. It is estimated that about half of HCAIs can be prevented.

This is a multi-million euro project which will deliver significant benefits to the patients, service users and staff. Infection Prevention & Control (IPC) teams will now have access to a “one stop shop” for all their IPC information in relation to their patients or service users. Having everything in the one system means that the IPC teams have fast access to all the information they need to deliver care that is appropriate and timely which reduces the number of HCAIs. The system assists staff in the timely management of outbreaks. It significantly reduces the administrative burden on these teams and has additional features such as clinical audit.

The system has comprehensive reporting capabilities which can be configured to support local needs, it delivers enhanced workforce productivity due to greater efficiencies in obtaining patient information, record keeping, and administration.

There are several hospitals which already have clinical surveillance systems in place for Infection Control, these include Tallaght University Hospital, and all hospitals in UL Hospital Group. Currently a project is underway across the Saolta Hospital Group in collaboration with CHO1 and CHO2 to roll out such a system in an integrated way across acute and community services. To date it has been implemented in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon University Hospitals with Letterkenny, Sligo and Portiuncula University Hospitals planning implementation this year.

A national eHealth project team and Informatics Nurse posts (CNM2) have been appointed to support implementation of this system. These Informatics Nurses have developed a community of practice and meet monthly to share learning from previous implementations and plan for the future.

This project is now moving to implementation and is focusing on the South of Ireland. Kerry University Hospital is the first site planning to implement the system in this first phase and the Local Implementation Group (LIG) has been established to deliver this. This team will work closely with the National eHealth and AMRIC team in collaboration with the preferred vendor.

If you would like more information or would like to speak to someone working on this project, please contact: NCSICS@hse.ie