Filenews 17 December 2024 - by Marilena Panayi
On average, once a week, NHS software has been paralyzed for the past two months. Patients suffered, health care providers, too. People had to visit a pharmacy two or three times on the same day to secure their medicines, doctors and pharmacists had to be in constant telephone contact with each other in order to inform each other about the medicines that each patient had to take, doctors did not have access to the electronic history of their patients.
"A situation which, not only was not pleasant for anyone, not for the Health Insurance Organization and certainly not for our beneficiaries and providers," Marios Tziakouris, deputy director of the HIO and responsible director of the Organization, told F.
Is the problem resolved? "It seems that we are on a very good track to resolve it and at the moment the data from the IT system is satisfactory and in the last ten days we have not had any new problems. However, a risk still exists and the contractor's efforts are focused on mitigating that risk as much as possible."
But how did it start and what caused the problem? "As is well known, the GHS IT system is managed by a contractor company and its partners. When the Agency's contract with the contractor was recently renewed, the company informed that it would reorganize the project team, absorbing many of the tasks previously carried out by its partners. As part of this reorganization, the various problems which the contractor is working hard to solve have begun to emerge. You understand that it was a transitional stage in which the company itself was trying to adapt to certain parts of the software that were not previously under its management. The problems are of a technical nature and we could, of course, give technical details of these problems, but we do not think that this concerns citizens who have suffered immeasurably. No matter how many technical 'excuses' we make, unfortunately, this does not change."
The HIO, explained the Deputy Director-General of the Organization, "all this time could not technically intervene in the software. All we could do was make strict recommendations to the contractor to strengthen its working teams with experienced staff who would be able to successfully deal with the technical problems encountered and expect the contractor to abide by the commitments stipulated in the contract regarding the performance and quality of the services provided." Also, "the contractor was twice summoned to the board of directors of the Agency to explain exactly what was happening, what problems it was facing and what measures it was taking."
"We all understand that the software of the GHS, which we must say is one of the most successful and remarkable systems of its kind, is extremely complex and therefore needs specialized and experienced staff to be able to operate."
It is a pity, said Mr. Tziakouris, "because the GHS IT system is an efficient and reliable system and which for five years has not presented us with any problems. It is a system that, although many questioned it at the beginning of the implementation of the GHS in 2019, proved that it was ready to respond and serve the health needs of all beneficiaries and for the vast majority of health providers and their support staff. It would not be an exaggeration to say that with the GHS Information System, our country has made huge strides in the field of e-health, since all our information is now registered electronically and available to all providers in order to offer better quality services to our beneficiaries".
Then, in 2019, "because and as expected, GHS service providers were not familiar, they often complained about the IT system. But very quickly the data changed and now, as we all see, our providers can navigate to it and make their listings without problem. We must also say that there have been several upgrades to date and they will certainly continue to be done as the health sector is constantly changing."
