Belfast Health and Social Care Trust went live this week (6 June) with its electronic patient record system, replacing previous paper processes, with a digital record.
The trust went live at 4am on Thursday, as part of a national programme to introduce an electronic health and social care record to cover every person in Northern Ireland.
On LinkedIn, chief digital information officer, Dan West, also announced: “While the airwaves are rightly buzzing with messages of support and excitement for today’s Encompass go-live at Belfast Trust, it should not be overlooked that we also went live with parts of our new Northern Ireland wide Labs and Blood Transfusion transformation, and aspects of the NIPACS+ single imaging platform roll-out. These are all critical jigsaw puzzle pieces for the HSC Digital Vision. Big kudos and congratulations to all the teams working on all these projects!”
On the go-live, chief executive, Dr Cathy Jack, commented: “I am so proud of our staff who have been working tirelessly on our go-live preparations over the past year. I want to thank our staff for their tremendous efforts and thank everyone who has helped us implement the system, including our colleagues from other Trusts, regional encompass colleagues and the Epic team.
“The introduction of encompass means the way we work has changed. Our staff will now have immediate access to care records, whether patients or service users are in hospital or at home. This will improve efficiency across the system and contribute positively to patient safety. Most importantly, there are also enormous benefits for our patients and service users who will not need to repeat their information to staff at every appointment, creating a better experience for them.”
To mark the go-live the trust shared a short video:
Alastair Campbell, Belfast Trust’s director of performance, planning and informatics added: “encompass is now the interface through which every clinical and administrative team delivers care. This is a huge change and there will be a period of adjustment for staff as we get used to the new system. We would like to thank patients, service users and visitors for their patience and understanding during this time.”
