The Evolution and Impact of Ireland's Health Provider Portal

The Health Provider Portal (HPP), built in-house by the A2I-HIDs development team, is a suite of four web-based applications:

• HSE PharmaVax

• HSE GPVax

• HSE CommunityVax

• HSE Vaccination History Search

The first of these applications, HSE PharmaVax, went live on 14 June 2021. Developed initially to support COVID-19 vaccine administration across Community Pharmacies, HSE PharmaVax is now available to over 1600 registered Pharmacies in Ireland.

In late August 2021, the user base was expanded with the creation of the HSE GPVax application to enable GPs, who do not have accredited practice management systems, to electronically record the COVID-19 vaccinations administered in their practices. The Vaccination History Search facility was also developed at this time to allow users to confirm the vaccination history of a client prior to vaccination.

Both HSE PharmaVax and HSE GPVax are integrated with the national vaccination system, COVAX. This integration, supported by the Individual Health Identifier, ensures that all citizens’ vaccination records can be managed centrally regardless of where the vaccination was administered. Reimbursement claims relating to the administration of vaccinations are also communicated from HSE PharmaVax and HSE GPVax to the Primary Care Reimbursement Service (PCRS) to enable payments to be processed to participating Pharmacies and GPs.

Progression of the Health Provider Portal

In 2022, HSE PharmaVax and HSE GPVax functionality was extended to enable users to record influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations.

In 2023, the corrections facility for vaccinations was introduced, along with the launch of the HSE CommunityVax application. The CommunityVax application provides a vaccination event recording service for community organisations, care homes and private hospitals who administer influenza vaccinations, as part of the yearly seasonal flu campaign. The HPP Admin Portal also went live in 2023. This provides the HPP Support Team with key system admin functionalities to manage user on-boarding and resolve user issues effectively.

The Year Ahead

This year the HPP team has already delivered application enhancements to facilitate the Spring COVID-19 Vaccination Programme as well as expanding the HPP System Admin functionality.

By mid-year, reimbursement claims to PCRS for Pharmacies and GPs enrolled in the vaccination programme, will be progressed to near real-time automatic transfer via Healthlink HL7 messaging integration.

Work is ongoing to make our applications as user friendly as possible with improvements planned for the reporting features and client registration process. Changes will also be implemented to cater for the 2024/2025 influenza campaign.

Conclusion

As we approach the 3rd anniversary of the inception of the Health Provider Portal, it is humbling to reflect that our in-house developed applications have now recorded nearly 2.5 million vaccinations.

Thanks to everyone involved in the design, implementation and ongoing support of this national public health solution, in particular the Technology and Transformation A2i-HIDs team who led this development, in close co-operation with our Technology and Transformation and clinical/service colleagues (e.g. Covax and IIS teams, National Immunisation Office, Primary Care, Pharmacy and GP representatives, PCRS, Health Protection Surveillance Centre and HSE Live).

The future truly is bright for HPP. A2i-HIDs look forward to expanding the platform’s capability further to host new services as and when required.

For more information, view the A2iHIDs webpage here.