Lero, the Irish Software Engineering Research Centre, has announced a collaboration between practising hospital staff and academia designed to boost the quality of patient care through improved use of software. Louise Reid, clinical audit development officer within the HSE Mid-West and a current PhD student at the University of Limerick, is conducting research with Lero in a number of hospitals in Limerick on the development of a Hospital Quality Assurance Program, H-QAP. This program ensures the use and implementation of quality IT systems and could be used across the Irish hospital sector to ensure that clinicians receive timely and accurate data. Louise has received funding of €20,000 from the European Union project through the TRANSFoRm project. In addition, Martha Lotter, a radiographer in the Mid Western Regional Hospital in Limerick, has recently been awarded an Irish Research Council Employment-based grant worth €75,000. Her research will implement a quality performance management system for radiology in the hospital. The results of both programmes have the potential to be implemented across the HSE. Dr Ita Richardson, principal investigator of Lero and senior lecturer at the University of Limerick, said that software was increasingly being used across hospitals globally but, in many cases, the necessary quality-control systems were not yet in place. “Regulatory control alone will not ensure that a system is successful or safe in a clinical environment," she said. "We intend that results from these research programmes involving clinicians practicing in real-time health environments will boost Ireland’s capabilities in the implementation and use of quality controlled software applications in hospitals.” Prof Mike Hinchey, director of Lero added, “This programme is important because our research to date suggests that quality standards for IT systems in hospitals fall short of those for medical devices. The EU has declared that any software used in a medical setting should be classified as a medical device.” Lero’s Hospital Quality Assurance Program (H-QAP) has been implemented across a number of departments in hospitals in the Mid West. “We intend to implement H-QAP in other departments and ultimately, to hospitals nationally,” added Dr Richardson. Lero brings together researchers in the University of Limerick, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Dublin City University, NUI Galway and Dundalk Institute of Technology and is funded by Science Foundation Ireland and other Irish and international funding agencies.