Any breakdown in an ageing computer system operating on obsolete technology at one of the country’s largest hospitals before its scheduled replacement next December could lead to a “significant curtailment of services”, the chairwoman of its board has warned.
In a note in the annual financial statement of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, Pauline Philip said “any such outage would have a serious impact on the services” it provides.
The statement said replacing the information system had been “a key focus” of the hospital for many years and an extensive overarching project to bring this about was under way.
However, it said a delay in putting in place one element and knock-on effects on replacement programmes for other systems had resulted in a scenario where there was very little room left for any further hold-ups.
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It said replacement of the IT system had been “identified as the hospital’s key risk in its corporate risk register and has been the subject of ongoing dialogue with HSE”.
Ms Philip said the Beaumont Hospital Information System (BHIS) was the core system within the hospital, underpinning patient service provision covering areas from patient management to labs.
She said the BHIS was implemented in Beaumont more than 30 years ago and it operated on software and hardware technology now effectively obsolete and for which there was no external support.
[ Surgeons at Beaumont will be able to use AI in new digital operating theatreOpens in new window ]
“BHIS has an end-of-life date of 31 December 2025 due to a Y2K bug fix and will be inoperable beyond that date.”
Ms Philip said because of the “legacy nature” of the current system, the key expertise in operating it resided with the existing IT team at Beaumont Hospital. She said there was “little or no third-party support available”.
“No other hospital in the world operates BHIS and as a consequence, there will always be a risk of a system outage that the IT leadership team may not be able to address in a timely manner.
“As one of the largest acute hospitals in the State, any such outage would have a serious impact on the services that the hospital provides.
“Management is progressing the development of a specific module of its business continuity plan for big incidents to include a segment for a BHIS system outage or IT replacement system unavailability in conjunction with HSE management and other relevant hospitals in the state in terms of minimising the impact on service capability.”
Ms Philip’s note in the financial statement, which has been published by the Oireachtas, is dated October 8th, 2024. The hospital did not reply to questions submitted by The Irish Times.
Beaumont has more than 1,000 inpatient and day-case beds and in excess of 4,500 staff. In 2023, it had 26,600 inpatients, 73,558 day patients and 27,612 dialysis day-care patients. It also dealt with 200,432 consultant-led outpatient appointments and 63,281 emergency department attendances.
The financial statement said the BHIS consisted of “a number of tightly integrated modules” including the patient administration system — used to record patient details and track, and manage admissions, appointments, bed occupancy and discharges; the order communications system — used for electronically ordering medication and diagnostic tests and viewing test results; the laboratory information management system — used for managing clinical testing and reporting and the emergency department system.
The statement said that external consultants had concluded in 2023 that “the current circumstances surrounding the BHIS represent a significant risk to business continuity and hospital operations”.
“The timescale to implement the BHIS replacement programme by December 2025, coupled with reliance on a small number of individuals with specialist knowledge, lack of vendor support, resourcing pressures, and the constant risk of BHIS outages or disruption created a precarious position for Beaumont Hospital.”
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