Q. What does the National General Practice Information Technology (GPIT) group do?

A. The National General Practice Information Technology (GPIT) group is made up of representatives from the Irish College of General Practitioners, the Health Service Executive and the Department of Health. The aim of the GPIT group is to promote the eHealth agenda in Ireland, in particular electronic communications and interoperability between GP and health service information systems. The activities of the GPIT team (www.gpit.ie) include:

• Educating GPs with online webinars and presentations at the ICGP AGM, ICGP Summer School, CME groups and GP training programmes
• Working to give a GP perspective to major national information systems, such as the National Integrated Medical Imaging System (NIMIS), the National Medical Laboratory Information System (MedLIS) and the National Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System
• Providing a primary care input into the Individual Health Identifiers (IHI) project
• Working to improve electronic communication between GPs and the health services, particularly through structured messaging (electronic referrals, laboratory and x-ray results) and Healthlink
• Managing and supporting Healthmail, secure clinical email, providing secure electronic communications between clinicians, in support of patient care
• Working with Healthlink and the Primary Care Reimbursement Service to enable electronic returns of data for periodic assessments, asthma and diabetes cycles of care
• Membership of the Project Board of the National Laboratory Information System project, MedLIS, which will implement a new national laboratory system in 2016
• Contributing to HIQA committees and advisory groups
• Providing a general practice and primary care perspective on interoperability and health informatics standards in the health services.