Modernising National Track and Trace - Ensuring Resilience, Efficiency, and Patient Safety

Decontamination Services such as CSSD (Central Sterile Services Department) and EDU (Endoscope Decontamination Unit) are vital to the operation of any hospital. The National Track and Trace application provides for comprehensive traceability and an electronic record of reprocessed reusable clinical devices (RIMD), endoscopes and accessories used on patients across 46 acute hospitals nationally.

A requirement to migrate the National Track and Trace application to modern infrastructure ensuring long term resilience was identified and, as part of this migration, an application upgrade was also planned.

A new high-availability SQL 2022 server environment was provisioned to support the application upgrade and conversion of relevant databases from Sybase, a legacy type of database system, to a managed SQL setting with HSE National Database Services.

Work on this three-phase migration commenced in February 2024, with the first phase upgrade of the application’s Citrix layer successfully completed in May 2024. The second phase upgrade of the data layer commenced in late summer, with a pilot site in University Hospital Waterford (UHW) identified and confirmed in July.

After initial engagement and site assessment, followed by extensive user and data acceptance testing by the UHW local project team with Technology and Transformation’s Clinical Application team, the UHW site successfully went live on November 6th on the latest version of Track and Trace in the new high availability environment and with no impact on patient care.

The valuable learnings from this UHW pilot will be used to support the continued rollout of phase two upgrades across the remaining 45 acute sites. The Clinical Applications team are especially grateful to our colleagues across Technology and Transformation who have dedicated valuable time and resources to ensure the success of this upgrade, along with the support and guidance from the application vendor, Athera Healthcare.

Finally, special thanks to the UHW team whose unwavering support and hard work during this implementation, while still managing their day-to-day responsibilities, led to the successful delivery of this pilot.

The following benefits arising from this upgrade will impact positively on patient care:

• Service Continuity: In the new high availability environment, a three cluster/two node environment will ensure that sites experience minimal interruption for users and minimal impact on patient care. 
• Infrastructure Risk Mitigation: This upgrade substantially reduces the technology and security risks associated with the old infrastructure.

• Data Security: The risk of data loss inherent in the older environment has now been mitigated.

• Product Updates: This latest version of the National Track and Trace application ensures the foundation is in place for future upgrades and new product features.
• Improved Efficiency: Enhanced system response time provides a platform for an improved user experience.