Health and Social Care Northern Ireland has provided an update on its ‘Encompass’ programme, a £300m 10-year work-stream to deliver a new electronic patient record for five trusts.
The contract for the programme was signed in June 2020 to implement the Epic electronic patient record, develop its infrastructure and create up to 200 additional jobs.
One of the aims is to develop a ‘digital front door’ to health and social care in terms of access, triage, support for self-care and treatment.
HSCNI said ‘good progress’ has been made, and they now plan to move through the ‘main phases’ of the programme, with the EPR scheduled to be in use across all trusts by 2025.
Since 2020, the project has focused on ‘pre-work’, such as the completion of legacy data collection and the establishment of Design Authorities, Advisory Councils, and Decision and Design groups.
This month, staff across the trusts attended virtual workflow walkthrough sessions, to learn about the new digital record and how it will benefit them.
The first go-live date in a trust, for South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, has been moved from 2022, to March 2023. Allowing for user and system readiness testing to take place for 10 months beforehand. The training and go-live part of the programme will start in January 2023, and continue to March 2025 when the final trust is planned to go-live.
HSCNI announced the go-live dates:
- South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust – March 2023
- Belfast Health and Social Care Trust – September 2023
- Health and Social Care Trust 3 – April 2024
- Health and Social Care Trust 4 – October 2024
- Health and Social Care Trust 5 – March 2025
Following the system going live across five trusts, the programme will continue for two years to cover an optimisation phase.
