7th May 2026
Today, Friday 8th May 2026, marks one year since the Southern Trust went live with encompass, Northern Ireland’s digital health and social care record system, a major milestone in the organisation’s journey of digital transformation.
The date also commemorates a landmark moment for health and social care across Northern Ireland. With the Western Trust also going live on the same day, 8 May 2025 saw the completion of the encompass rollout across all five Health and Social Care Trusts, creating a single integrated digital care record system for the region and fundamentally transforming how patient information is recorded, accessed and shared.
Over the past year, encompass continues to be embedded across Southern Trust services.
A key feature of the system, the My Care portal, has given people greater visibility of their appointments, communications and parts of their health record. By placing information directly into their own hands, patients and service users are encouraged to play a more active role in managing their own care.
For staff, encompass has significantly improved how information is shared and used. Real-time access to accurate patient and service user data supports better communication between multidisciplinary teams, enhances care co-ordination, reduces duplication, and enables faster, more informed clinical decision-making. The transition from multiple legacy systems and paper-based processes to a single digital record also releases more time to focus on care.
Other benefits that have been highlighted by Trust teams include prescribing on encompass, saving time, improving accuracy and alerting patients to when their medications are ready; the ability for support staff to see bed availability to provide a smoother patient flow throughout the hospital; and managing capacity and attendances within day care services.
Reflecting on the success of the past 12 months, Interim Programme Director of encompass for the Southern Trust, Siobhan Hanna, said: “We are extremely proud to have contributed to one of the most significant digital health and social care transformations of our time with the encompass go-live.
“The implementation of encompass demonstrated a huge collective organisational effort and shared commitment, from frontline clinical and social care professionals to operational, digital and administrative colleagues.
“One year on, encompass is really helping to reshape how health and social care is delivered in the Southern Trust – creating a more connected, efficient, and patient-centred system as part of everyday care.
“Our Trust Vision and Strategy recognises the importance of broadening the use of digital technology to improve patient care.
“We remain committed to continually maximising the benefits of encompass and using digital innovation to further enhance services and improve the experience of care for the population that we serve.”