3 October 2023
A new era for Northern Ireland’s health service will dawn on Thursday 9 November 2023 when the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust waves goodbye to paper patient records and launches the major new electronic patient record called encompass.
Dan West, Chief Digital Information Officer at the Department of Health and Head of Digital Health and Care Northern Ireland, said: “encompass is an important part of the transformation of our Health and Care sector. It is more than just an IT system – it is a clinical and operational change that will help our most precious resources, our staff, to deliver the best services they can to people in Northern Ireland.
“It simplifies things, allows care workers to see the right information at the right time, eliminates heavy paper records, and reduces duplication of tests. It makes managing medicines easier for our pharmacists, and provides better quality data for improvement of our services in the future.”
The HSCNI Senior Responsible Owner for encompass, Dr Dermot Hughes, said: “It will be an important milestone when we implement encompass at South Eastern HSC Trust. It will provide opportunities to improve care and how the public interact with care.
“The teams behind this programme come from all areas in the Health and Social Care Services. They have worked diligently to reach this stage despite the pandemic and service pressures. We are on the cusp of a new digital era in the Health and Care Service in NI which will transform how care is delivered and how care is experienced.”
For more information, please go to:
Digital revolution for NI patient records | Department of Health (health-ni.gov.uk)