Health Information overview | Current projects | Workshop

National Steering Group on Health Information Standards Terms of Reference

Accurate and timely information is central to a safe and efficient health and social care system. To help to ensure that high quality health and social care information is available to support the delivery, planning and monitoring of services, our work will focus on:

Role of the National Steering Group on Health Information Standards

The role of the National Steering Group on Health Information Standards is to make recommendations to the Health Information and Quality Authority in respect of national standards for health information. The Group will ensure a coherent and consistent approach to the development of standards. It will facilitate dissemination of international best practice and will support and promote the use of standards throughout the health sector. Wherever possible, these standards will be proven international standards with clear evidence that they have been implemented and validated either in Ireland or elsewhere.

Terms of Reference

The terms of reference of the Group are as follows:

• champion new health information standards; reviewing existing sector developments where health information standards are being considered, tested or developed; and supporting these endeavours when appropriate
• make recommendations to the Health Information and Quality Authority on standards in respect to data definitions, clinical concepts and terminologies, coding and classifications, messaging, the Electronic Health Record, security, audit, safety, and quality
• identify and prioritise those areas in which standards are required bearing in mind where there are short, intermediate and long term priorities
• agree working procedures and processes and document these
• identify and establish Working Groups to address the priority areas as required
• delegate to Working Groups specific tasks, revoking and amending those delegations as required
• identify key stakeholders e.g. user communities, professional bodies, software vendors and domain experts who should be directly involved and/or consulted on depending on the particular standard being developed
• agree terms of reference and methods of working for working groups
• support the Working Groups in their work
• work to ensure the ongoing development and implementation of health information standards
• work to ensure the ongoing development and implementation of guidance to inform the effective use of health information standards
• consider the advice of the working groups and make recommendations in relation to specific standards for approval to the Health Information and Quality Authority.

Membership

Initial membership of the Group will include representatives from:

• the Health Information and Quality Authority (Chair)
• Department of Health and Children
• the Health Service Executive
• the National Standards Authority of Ireland
• the National Cancer Registry
• the Economic and Social Research Institute
• the Institute for Public Health
• the Health Research Board