2.1 Extending Pathfinder EHR Programmes
The CFO, CIO, and ND Acute Hospitals presented the briefing papers on two contracts, MedLIS (National Medical Laboratory Information System) Remote Hosted Move and the MN-CMS Stabilisation and Deployment to the Committee for review.
The Committee considered the proposed transactions and the reasons outlined in the briefing papers circulated in advance of the Committee meeting.
The Committee discussed with the CFO, CIO, and ND Acute Operations the proposal to move the systems from aging platforms to a remote hosted server option to maintain and support system integrity following the cyber-attack. Additionally, in relation to the MN-CMS Stabilisation and deployment the Committee were briefed on the migration of the existing environment from the HSE Data centre to a remote hosted model in Sweden, the upgrade of existing code base from 2015 to latest available version, and the deployment of MN-CMS in Coombe Women and Infants Hospital and University Maternity Hospital Limerick.
The Committee were informed that both projects had separate governance channels up until 2020 but given that the shared platform and common datasets a joint executive group was established. The Millennium Executive Governance Group (MEGG) was drawn from both project chairs, Clinical leads, CIO and programme managers, chaired by the National Director of Acute Operations.
The CIO confirmed that the Cyber-attack re-enforced the move to a vendor hosting option. It was noted that it was decided to have separate remotely hosted instances of MN-CMS and MedLIS to guard against the issue of extending implementation timelines for both programmes and simplifies the deployment pathway.
In response to questions on the procurement approach the Head of Procurement confirmed that there is justification for the use of a Negotiated Procedure without Prior Publication and that in order to derisk any procurement related issues the decision was also made to publish a Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency (VEAT) notice in parallel with seeking the appropriate HSE approvals.
The Committee discussed the challenges to date, the proposed deployment, and way forward for MNCMS Stabilisation and further rollout.
The Committee sought further assurance that the MedLIS contract extension and investment required will deliver a live system and sought specific details on the timings involved. The Committee requested that further details are provided on the risk, patient safety benefits, and investment decisions relating to the remote hosting and further deployment the upgrade of existing code base from 2015 to latest available version, and the deployment of MN-CMS in Coombe Women and Infants Hospital and University Maternity Hospital Limerick.
More clarity was also requested in documenting the procurement approach being utilised. The CFO thanked the Committee for the feedback and agreed that he will bring back a further paper to the Committee.