A tender for the supply of an electronic Patient Administration System, Primary Care System, Community Care System and Mental Health System has been published this week in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The Government says that this is the next, and most significant step in the Government’s Manifesto Commitment to set up a fully-fledged Electronic Health Record (EHR) for the Gibraltar Health Authority (GHA).

Despite huge strides made in a number of areas by the GHA’s own IT personnel, with more new systems going on stream regularly, Gibraltar still lags a great way behind the state of the art technology it deserves.

Once complete, the EHR will ensure all patients’ records from all departments, including the Primary Care Centre, Hospital clinics and wards, Accident and Emergency and other Departments and Mental Health will be fully up to date and accessible across the organisation to authorised clinicians. It will also allow the keeping of accurate statistics and improve standards of care through enhanced clinical governance.

The new systems, once the tender is awarded, will be developed in close collaboration with the GHA’s own Information Technology Staff, whose experience and expertise will be invaluable.

The first elements of the system are expected to be functional by the middle of 2014, with the full EHR expected to be fully operational by the latter half of 2015.

Commenting on the latest development, Minister for Health, Dr John Cortes, stated, “This is a very exciting step which should have been taken years ago. Present day technology is a vital tool in modern healthcare. The benefits will be tremendous, with real benefits to patients and staff, and to Gibraltar’s reputation as an advanced, caring society. This will be the most significant step forward in the Gibraltar health service in a century. It’s a privilege for all of us currently in the GHA to be involved in this transformation.”