The GPIT Project

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 group consists of a team of working GPs with an expertise in health informatics promotes the GPIT agenda with educational activities and project work. 

• National GPIT project manager: Dr John Sweeney
• National GPIT co-ordinator: Dr Conor O'Shea 

GPIT Advisors: 

• Dr Frank Hill
• Dr John MacCarthy
• Dr Brian Meade
• Dr Donal Buckley
• Dr Deirdre Cahill
• Dr Lawrence Croydon

The activities of the GPIT team include:

• Accreditation of new and existing Practice Management Software
• Educating GPs with online webinars and presentations at the Irish College of GPs AGM, Irish College of GPs 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 ePrescribing project, the Summary/Shared Care Record Project 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, mainly through structured messaging (electronic referrals and discharge reports, laboratory and x-ray results) and Healthlink
• Writing monthly IT questions and answers for Forum, the Journal of the Irish College of GPs
• Managing and supporting Healthmail, secure clinical email, providing secure electronic communications between clinicians, in support of patient care
• Working with the National Cancer Control Programme on electronic cancer referrals
• Working with Healthlink and the Primary Care Reimbursement Service to enable electronic returns of data for the Chronic Disease Management Project and vaccination returns.
• Contributing to HIQA committees and advisory groups
• Answering individual queries from GPs in IT matters
• Providing a general practice and primary care perspective on interoperability and health informatics standards in the health services.
• Providing information to GPs on information security and compliance with National and European legislation