The Maternal and Newborn Clinical Management System (MN CMS) will go live at two more hospitals before the end of next year, bringing the proportion of births covered by the system to 65 per cent.

Phase II of the MN CMS implementation plan is now underway and will go live at the Coombe Hospital and University Maternity Hospital Limerick (UMHL) in the last six months of 2025.

The project aims to provide a single electronic health record (EHR) for all women and babies being cared for in maternity, newborn and gynaecology services in Ireland, and facilitates communication between the relevant healthcare providers, including GPs.

It is currently live in four sites: Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH), University Hospital Kerry (UHK), the Rotunda Hospital and the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) in Dublin. At present, more than 40 per cent of Irish births are recorded and managed on the MN-CMS, and 45 per cent of neonatal intensive care cots are live on the system.

The initiative has faced significant delay, having first been launched in 2007 with the appointment of a project board to conduct a needs assessment for a maternal and newborn electronic health record. The public procurement process commenced in late 2011 and concluded with contract signing with the appointed vendor, Cerner, in early 2014.

Phase 1 of the implementation plan saw successful deployment of the system at CUMH in December 2016, followed by UHK in March 2017, the Rotunda Hospital in November 2017, and the National Maternity Hospital in January 2018.

Following a review of Phase 1 it was recognised that gynaecology care should also be documented within the electronic and the gynaecology electronic record was implemented at all four phase 1 sites in 2019.

The Coombe and UMHL will be the first new sites to go live in almost six years.

In a statement to Pulse+IT, the HSE said: “There have been a number of challenges with the roll-out of MN CMS including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly disrupted healthcare services and led to delays in non-COVID related projects, including the planned deployment of the MN CMS system.

“In addition, the 2021 HSE cyber-attack severely affected the national healthcare infrastructure, compromising IT systems and requiring extensive efforts to restore and secure operations. Projects dependent on these systems, such as the MN CMS, subsequently faced inevitable delays.

“In response to the cyber-attack, the MN CMS program underwent a critical software upgrade. This upgrade included a move to remote hosting, aimed at providing better protection against future outages and ensuring the system’s stability. These necessary upgrades, while improving the long-term reliability of MN CMS, contributed to the delayed implementation timeline.”

The statement went on to say that, despite the delay, “the phased approach to the implementation of the MN CMS remains a key priority. Phase II implementation will see the Coombe Hospital and University Maternity Hospital Limerick go live in Q3/Q4 of 2025, in-turn bringing enhanced maternity and neonatal care to a greater proportion of the population.”