Monthly Archives: January, 2018

New safefood funded research into the cost of childhood overweight and obesity on the island of Ireland has estimated the total lifetime cost to be €7.2billion (€4.6 billion in the Republic Of Ireland and £2.1 billion in Northern Ireland).

Too many older adults were entering long term care unnecessarily or prematurely rather than being enabled to stay living at home, according to the OPRAH Report on ‘Older People Remaining in their own Homes, presented to Minister for Older People Jim Daly.

HIQA has published an updated electronic health messaging standard which allows GPs to communicate with hospitals in a structured way. The General Practice Messaging Standard, which plays an important role in the development of eHealth, has been updated and builds on a previous standard. It specifies the structure and content of electronic messages for health and social care.

Each hospital providing hip fracture surgery should be resourced to provide a seven day a week service to trauma patients - including prompt access to theatre, medical support and early mobilisation by a physiotherapist, it was recommended in the Irish Hip Fracture Database National Report 2016.

There was a record number of organ donor and transplantations in Ireland in 2017, with a total of 308 organ transplants.

Minister of State with special responsibility for Disabilities, Finian McGrath TD, announced a €4.5m fund to support the reform of disability services.

A new study has found that while the use of healthcare services by older adults increases in the last year of life, there is no evidence of the highly intensive end-of-life care that is seen in other countries and which is often associated with inappropriate care and undesirable outcomes.