HMI Fellow and former HMI President, Mr. Kieran Hickey has become the first senior health manager to be presented with the prestigious O’Moore Medal by the Healthcare Informatics Society of Ireland (HISI) and the Royal Irish Academy.
Mr. Hickey, who is a former Chief Executive of the Eastern Health Board, said he was deeply honoured to receive the award which is for individuals or organisations that have made a major contribution to healthcare informatics.
The award was presented at the 16th Annual Conference and Scientific Symposium of HISI.
Mr. Hickey said he would like to see his acceptance of the award as a symbol and a public acknowledgment of the importance of active senior management commitment, support and leadership in the development of ICT in healthcare.
“From my experience I believe that senior managers and policy makers are centrally important to the successful advancement of ICT in healthcare. This is already recognised elsewhere. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems (HIMSS) IT Achievement Award of the year in the USA is already well known to us and we have had the privilege of having the 2011 recipient of that award, Mr. Michael Dowling, CEO of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, USA, address us at this conference for the past number of years, including this year.
“Technology has been changing all the time and the latest phase, is the mobile wireless era and cloud computing. But the central challenge remains constant – to deliver by whatever means, a standards based, comprehensive, secure and interoperable electronic health record, integrated across the various care settings. The new term is connected health care, with the ultimate objective of improving the accessibility, quality and effectiveness of care for the patient. This also has a really important pubic health benefit of providing data to improve the planning, management and evaluation of healthcare services.
“Here in Ireland we have always had to operate on a relatively low budget for Health ICT and in the current economic climate this is unlikely to change. Our challenge is, not just to be doing things but to do the right things, given our limited resources. There have been some ups and some downs but overall we have made slow, but steady progress.”
