NTPF

Enhancing efficiency of Ireland’s healthcare system

The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) plays a crucial role in Ireland’s healthcare system by facilitating quicker access to necessary medical treatments. It collaborates closely with Ireland’s Department of Health, HSE, acute hospitals, and private nursing homes across the health system.

The challenge

A vast amount of waiting list data must be constantly organised and updated to ensure that the right patient is assigned to the right hospital and receives the right specialist care. This information management and reporting was mostly done manually through a time-consuming, Excel-based process.

NTPF faced mounting pressure to reduce waiting times, ensure GDPR compliance, and provide real-time visibility for hospitals. Technical hurdles included integrating disparate systems and enabling secure, scalable access for multiple stakeholders. NTPF held a series of workshops with key stakeholders and the resounding conclusion was that a new IT system was needed to streamline data for the wide network of users.

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The solution

Spanish Point Technologies developed the Patient Access Management System (PAMS)—a comprehensive data access and case management solution—using Microsoft Power Platform, Azure, and Dynamics 365. The approach combined agile delivery of a low-code Power Platform solution with innovative CRM and data-driven business applications, security and governance of low-code platforms, secure architecture, integrated portals, automated workflows, and real-time reporting. This strategic solution enabled hospitals and NTPF staff to manage patient treatment offers efficiently and compliantly. A minimum viable product was rapidly created, including Power Apps applications for both NTPF employees and hospital staff.

Technical deep dive

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The result

PAMS transformed patient access management, significantly reducing waiting times and improving data security. Hospitals gained real-time visibility, while NTPF streamlined treatment offers nationwide. The system’s success earned the Best Use of Information Technology award at the Irish Healthcare Awards.

As funding to NTPF continues to grow, more patients are being managed through the system. Spanish Point and NTPF have leveraged the low-code flexibility of Power Platform to expand the system rapidly and meet increasing needs.

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“Spanish Point is a great company to partner with. Their use of Agile project management ensured that the project moved very quickly, from development to ‘go live’. We are looking forward to continuing to work with them.”
Alison GreenDirector of Process Innovation at NTPF

“The low-code efficiency of Power Platform was a key driver of that speed. We are really impressed with how quickly PAMS went from design and brainstorming to production. As a developer, I have always been somewhat sceptical of low code. But seeing our Power Platform applications move through development, test, and production in Azure DevOps gave me confidence that Power Platform can deliver at an enterprise scale.”
Eoin DarcyDirector of Information and Communications Technology at NTPF

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Technical deep dive

NTPF’s business processes were fast-tracked onto the low-code Power Platform with PAMS initial (Minimum Viable Product) MVP release for In-Patients went live within just three months. The goal was not only to build a cloud-based system that streamlined data for a wide network of users but also to build a system that is watertight from a security perspective to ensure every piece of personal data stored was protected in line with GDPR legislation.

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Data-driven business application design

The solution leveraged Microsoft Power Platform components—PowerApps, Power Pages, Power Automate—integrated with Azure Functions and Dynamics 365, all connected through a central Dataverse. Power BI dashboards provided real-time patient metrics to support NTPF’s public sector reporting requirements. A robust data model supported patient-level tracking and reporting, while automated ETL processes ensured accurate data ingestion from hospitals. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Reporting Services (SSRS) were employed for data warehousing and analytics, enabling historical and real-time insights. This architecture provided scalability and compliance with stringent healthcare data standards.