Galway Bay FM Newsroom - Substantial investment is necessary for the HSE in the aftermath of the recent cyber attack and to help with the backlog in services that have followed both the attack and the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is the opinion of Galway City Green Party Councillor Martina O'Connor who has pointed out that the impact to the patients and staff of the Irish Health system as result of both the pandemic and the cyber attack is detrimental and that substantial investment in IT will be required to deal with this and any potential future breach of HSE IT systems.
Councillor O'Connor added that she was relieved to see the volume of work that is going ahead in Galway hospitals this week, particularly in the area of Maternity services, dialysis, chemotherapy and physiotherapy appointments.
A recent statement from The Saolta Hospital Group said that as a result of the recent attack on HSE Systems, Outpatient clinics (apart from Maternity clinics), Diagnostics including x-ray, CT scans, MRI appointments, cardiac investigations and endoscopy services continue to be cancelled along with most elective inpatient and day case procedures.
A number of orthopaedic procedures will go ahead in Merlin Park and a number of surgical day ward and urgent/time-sensitive procedures will go ahead in UHG.
Councillor O'Connor said having worked in the HSE herself she has found that the systems were in need of investment. She added that recent events have affected everyone and that it is almost like a war declared on our health system.
