Information technology in the Irish health service is ‘years behind where it should be', Health Minister, Leo Varadkar, has admitted.

He made his comment after announcing the appointment of the first chief information officer (CIO) for the HSE. Richard Corbridge will be responsible for ‘ensuring that technology is used to support healthcare as effectively as possible'.

"Information technology (IT) has a crucial role in patient care. It allows medical staff to immediately share vital information, records to be stored and shared, and a vast range of other functions. It also allows smaller hospitals to link up with centres of excellence and allows more patients to be treated at home," Minister Varadkar commented.

He said that Mr Corbridge's appointment is the first step in overhauling the Irish health service's technological capacity.

Mr Corbridge has been working in the UK for the last 17 years in the field of healthcare informatics and most recently, he was the CIO for the UK's National Institute for Health Research, which works to turn the benefits of the latest research into improved patient care.

Mr Varadkar noted that the work ahead ‘will require a major investment by the State and will take many years'.

"It's a significant challenge. There are a huge number of different IT systems across the HSE which still cannot communicate with each other. A lot of this investment in IT will depend on continuing economic growth. But Richard Corbridge is an excellent candidate for that task having 17 years of health sector IT experience in the UK," he said.

Speaking after his appointment, Mr Corbridge said that Ireland ‘is in a very good position to capitalise on experiences in developing healthcare IT in other jurisdictions'.

"Throughout Ireland are pockets of health technology excellence in action. A key immediate action for the Office of the CIO is to consider how to join up these centres of excellence to ensure that local benefits are released nationally and lessons learnt from across the country can be applied to national implementations," he added.