Meeting 8

Minutes of the 8^th Department of Health / CSO Health Data Liaison Group (HDLG)

Meeting on 30^th October 2024 @ 10:00 - 13:00

The 8^th HDLG meeting was held as a hybrid meeting in the Department of Health and on Microsoft Teams on 30^th October 2024.

• Muiris O’Connor, Assistant Secretary, Department of Health, opened the meeting, welcomed members to this HDLG meeting and chaired the first half of the meeting.
• John Dunne, Senior Statistician, CSO, introduced and chaired the second half of the HDLG meeting.

In this meeting we remembered Martin Gallagher, a great colleague and friend to many of us, who suddenly passed away and left us too early. His work was very much cross-departmental. He worked tirelessly during the pandemic and the cyber-attack identifying novel ways of transferring data quickly between organisation in support of NPHET and others. Martin will be remembered as a kind and warm person who always had a friendly word for his colleagues and enjoyed catching up with them in the office.

General Updates from DOH and CSO

• Health Information Bill and European Health Data Space are making rapid progress. The Bill is now at final stages of approval.
• HSE/DoH Data Systems working group has been established for improved communication and access to the HSE data.
• DoH is engaging with private hospitals to improve data sharing for reporting to EU.
• Healthy Ireland wave 10 results are to be released in December 2024.
• CSO’s new Health and Social Cohesion Division spans three areas – Irish Health Survey, secondary data exploration, and Health Research Data Centre.
• CSO launched Health Research Data Centre to provide access to the data collected by the CSO for health research purposes.

Item 1: Driving data engagement with policymakers through Microsoft Power BI

Michael Courtney (DoH) presented recently developed Power BI dashboard used to facilitate better reporting for policy making. Good data makes good evidence, and good evidence makes good policy. The dashboard is used for reporting, performance monitoring and policy development. Several policy areas involved. Only aggregated data used and imported from multiple platforms.

Item 2: Growing Up in Ireland – Longitudinal Health Data of Children and Young People

Caragh Stapleton, CSO, presented on Growing Up in Ireland survey. The survey is now fully transferred to the CSO from ESRI, in collaboration with DCEDIY. Survey covers same cohort in different points in life, starting at 9 months old. There is no addition of children between waves.  Currently covers 1998, 2008 and 2024 cohorts. Has high impact on policy making for young people.

Item 3: TILDA - Planning for a healthy ageing population

Mark Ward, TCD, presented on TILDA – The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. TILDA collects information from adults aged 50 and over. The study covers wide range of themes, including health, nutrition, mental health, income etc., which are assessed with three modes – computer-assisted personal interview, self-completion questionnaire and health assessment. Currently on wave 7 of data collection. Mark explained how the difference between self-reported health and objective measures highlights the level of unmet need in the older population.

Item 4: Health Research Data Centre

Sanela Smith, CSO, presented on Health Research Data Centre, the new CSO’s initiative to provide researcher access to the data for health research purposes. Available data will cover nearly all the data collected by the CSO. Approval process will include three applications – to researcher’s local Research Ethics Committee (REC), to Health Research Consent Declaration Committee (HRCDC) and Research Data Governance Board (RDGB). Data is provided in pseudonymised and minimised form, through a safe and secure platform.