The country’s largest acute hospital, St James’s Hospital in Dublin, is trialling a new, digital electronic record (EPR), which it hopes will reduce waiting times and enhance patient safety.

The hospital has done away with unreliable paper trails in favour of a shiny new electronic system that details all patients’ health conditions, medications, allergies and care information.

With this bold move, said to be the biggest digitisation of patient records to date for an Irish hospital, the St James’s will be drastically reducing its use of paper (which, in this planet-conscious time is never a bad thing!), cutting patient waiting times and enhancing patient safety.

The new system, nicknamed ‘Project Oak’, was implemented over the course of one weekend after a three-year planning period. 2,400 members of staff have been fully trained on how to use the EPR over the course of 21,000 hours.

The hospital claims that patients won’t have to repeat details when receiving care and test results can be shared quickly and easily between departments.

“Each patient’s EPR will include medical and nursing assessments, medical history, medications, allergies, laboratory test results, radiology images, and more. The record can also include details of social care interactions and information about a patient’s living conditions.”

Could this be the next step for all hospitals in Ireland? Do you think electronic patient records will be a success? Tell us your thoughts by commenting below!