National Register of Individual Health Identifiers
HSE HIDS – Health Identifiers Service
Health Identifiers Service (HIDS) within the National Operational Performance & Integration Unit, Chief Operations Office, HSE.
The Health Identifier Service provides the HSE with an identity management service for Individuals and Health Services. The HIDS service is the designated authority, provided for under the Health Identifiers Act 2014, which establishes and operates all identifiers in systems across the HSE.
The Health Identifiers Act was enacted in July 2014 which gave a legal basis to establishing the technical department.
The Health Identifiers Business Service (HIDS) commenced in October 2019.
With the enactment of the Health Identifiers Act in 2014, residents and former residents in Ireland with a Personal Public Services Number (PPSN) were and are given an Individual Health Identifier (IHI) number.
It is used to uniquely identify each person engaging with the Health Service Executive and relevant social care agencies.
The main benefit of having an IHI is to ensure patient safety by correctly identifying a patient. Your IHI will help to improve the accuracy in associating your medical records held in different healthcare organisations so they are correctly attributed to you. Your IHI will provide the key to enabling your electronic healthcare record.
National.
Data collection began in 2016 and is ongoing.
An Individual Health Identifier or IHI is a number that uniquely and safely identifies each person that has used, is using or may use a health or social care service in Ireland. It will last for your lifetime and will never be re-issued to anyone else. The Health Identifiers Act enacted in July 2014 allows for the creation and operation of a unique health identifier for any person using a health or social care service in Ireland. The Minister for Health has delegated the authority to create and operate the IHI to the Health Service Executive (HSE). The purpose of the IHI is to accurately identify everyone so that health and social care can be delivered to the right person, in the right place and at the right time. The IHI can be used to identify an individual correctly and allow those who are delivering services to them to be assured that they have relevant information for the right person. The ultimate benefit of having an IHI for those who use health and social care services is safer and better quality care.
The Health Identifiers Service is still in development and the key users will continue to grow. The current key users of IHI data are Covid-related platforms that cover Covid-19 Testing and Vaccination programmes. This will extend to all technical systems, their users and reports associated with the IHI.
The Health Identifier Act 2014 provides the legal basis to collect, store and process the following data in your IHI record:
- Surname
- Forename
- Date of Birth
- Place of Birth
- Sex
- All former surnames
- Mother’s surname and all her former surnames
- Address
- Nationality
- Personal public service number (if any)
- Date of death in the case of a deceased individual
- Signature
- Photograph
- Middle name(s)
- Address (es)
- Postcodes/Eircodes
- Mobile phone numbers
- Other phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Medical card numbers, other health scheme numbers
- Medical record numbers
- Unique system identifiers.
https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2017-01/Demographic-Dataset-and-Guidance.pdf
Yes PPSN is noted as one of the Other Identifying Particulars (OIPs) on the Health Identifiers Act 2014.
- Place of Residence
- Sex.
Daily demographic feeds from the Department of Social Protection.
The IHI does not hold any Clinical coding or classification information.
With the enactment of the Health Identifiers Act in 2014, residents and former residents in Ireland with a Personal Public Services Number (PPSN) were given an Individual Health Identifier (IHI) number.
It is used to uniquely identify each person engaging with the Health Service Executive and relevant social care agencies.
381,186 IHI numbers were assigned in the past year.
N/A.
Queries can be directed to hids.info@hse.ie
No.