Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) will roll out InterSystems’ HealthShare Health Connect as its interoperability platform when the new children’s hospital in Dublin opens next year.

HealthShare Health Connect will be used as the integration engine for more than 70 systems at the new hospital, including clinical and non-clinical applications, devices and technologies.

The €2.2 billion hospital will be using an electronic health record from Epic under CHI’s Project Ogham, which CHI says will see the facility become the first digital public hospital in Ireland.

InterSystems’ HealthShare Health Connect platform uses HL7 v2 and FHIR for seamless data exchange and according to CHI’s chief technology officer Adrian Rath, will help to advance CHI’s IT vision of delivering the right information in the right format at the right time.

“We will have over 70 advanced clinical, operational, and corporate support systems in use at the new hospital, and so it is vital that everything communicates seamlessly,” Mr Rath said in a statement.

“We are confident in the ability of InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect to ensure uninterrupted interactions among these systems, as that will be pivotal in delivering superior service experiences for patients and staff.

“In addition to its reliability and scalability, InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect stood apart for us because of its user-friendly interface that allows our engineers to quickly create interfaces without having to spend time writing lines of code.”

In addition to integrating the EHR with other clinical systems, HealthShare Health Connect will also integrate building automation systems, automated pharmacy dispensing units and the movement of supplies around the building by robots.

InterSystems UK&I country manager Colin Henderson said accurate, data-driven decision-making depends on consistent and usable data that is effectively shared and understood from different sources.

“With HealthShare Health Connect, we provide a platform that enables a fully connected healthcare environment,” Mr Henderson said.

“The interoperability facilitates clear communication between healthcare professionals, enhances patient safety through real-time information that drives efficiency by automating key processes.”

In addition to the Epic EHR and InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect, CHI has also announced that Ascom’s alerts and notification management system (ANMS) will be rolled out with an integration with Epic’s Rover application.

The new hospital’s technological infrastructure and IT services is being built by Telefónica Tech UK and Ireland under a five-year deal.