THE HSE has secured interim High Court injunctions compelling a software firm to continue to provide support and maintenance to essential “patient critical” and other systems within the health service.
The court was told the software company had threatened to withdraw support and maintenance because it claimed the HSE was in breach of contract and owed it money.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy granted the HSE interim injunctions requiring Eamon Keogh, trading as Keogh Software, Harold’s Cross, Dublin, to restore and provide maintenance services for software services and applications located at 180 HSE sites around the country.
The injunctions are returnable to next week and were granted on an ex-parte (one side only) basis.
Emily Egan, for the HSE, said the injunctions were required because Keogh Software, a long-term supplier of software and systems to the HSE, had confirmed it was withdrawing support.
The systems in questions were used by different sections at various HSE facilities, including radiology, AE, hospital billing and environmental health, she said. One of the patient critical systems, the Keogh Radiology Information System (RIS), was used by radiology departments at 21 acute hospitals nationally.
The HSE claims support and maintenance of these systems is contractually due on foot of individual agreements between it and the defendant.
The court was told that, late last month, the defendant had claimed the HSE was in breach of all support contracts by failing to pay him €85,000, and had said he would withdraw all services if they did not agree to enter into meaningful negotiations with him.
The HSE denies it is in breach of contract and says it wrote to the company asking it to guarantee there would be no withdrawal of support services but the defendant had not done so.