Saturday 9th of November marks a year since the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust became the first Trust in Northern Ireland to implement the major new digital patient record system – encompass.
It was an historic moment.
This digital milestone was the culmination of over seven years of work which is making our health service safer, more efficient and effective.
Encompass, which has now also been rolled out in the Belfast and Northern Trusts means our health and social care records are digitised, accessed at the touch of a button and the need for paper records is being eliminated.
The Chief Executive of the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust Roisin Coulter said, “The 9th of November 2023 marked the start of our encompass journey and I am so proud of our staff who have embraced this change and have worked tirelessly together in order to implement this digital innovation.
“Our staff have also been very kindly lending their expertise and knowledge to other Trusts as they too Go-Live with this Regional programme.”
The Trust was delighted when the first baby to have a full digital health record was born in the Ulster Hospital at 01.25 am. Baby Nylah’s birth was certainly a momentous moment for digital transformation in health and social care in Northern Ireland.
The Director of Planning in the Trust, Helen Moore who led the encompass project detailed how she was, “Overwhelmed with pride at what we have achieved. Looking back on the year, I cannot believe what we have done. We’ve all had to work as a team. We’ve all had to realise that this is not a destination, but a journey, and we’re on the encompass journey together.”
The encompass Programme Manager, Sean Dooher explained that it was nearly impossible to describe the scale of encompass. “We had to train twelve thousand staff over the course of the “Go-Live” and over the past year we have deployed over twelve thousand devices. We had to migrate millions of records into the system including our laboratories and the radiology systems, so the scale is hard to imagine.
“Thanks to encompass, we now have over fifty five thousand “My Care” users, who have downloaded the patient portal, where they can access some of their medical information such as appointments and test results. This has never been possible before. It is their health in their hands.”
The Allied Health Professional encompass Lead in the Trust, Pippa McCabe, described how, “We all had a vision of what we wanted to do. It has been challenging, it definitely has, but we have worked through it and I think the South Eastern Trust is just fantastic at doing that. It’s success is down to every single person in this Trust.
The Western and Southern Health and Social Care Trusts will roll out encompass in May.
