In what is being described by Health & Social Care Northern Ireland as “the most successful data migration project – ever”, Egress Group has paved the way for the latest Epic go-live in the region, this time at Belfast Health & Social Care Trust.
The second phase of the country-wide implementation of the Epic Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system, which will ultimately deliver a single, integrated health & care record for all of the region’s 1.9m residents, went live on 6 June.
Egress migrated more than 3 million records from a range of clinical and administrative hospital systems across what is the largest integrated health and social care trust in the UK, achieving a phenomenal 99.9% success rate.
The most successful data migration programme – ever!” – customer representatives exclaimed.
Data migration projects are notorious for failing, so programme leads representing HSCNI were delighted with the results, proclaiming the work of Egress’ teams resulted in “the most successful data migration project – ever”.
The Trust were able to go-live with the new Epic system on time, safe in the knowledge that their data was robust and ready to use for frontline care, as well as for reporting and commissioning purposes.
The Belfast Trust serves a population of approximately 340,000, includes the region’s major teaching and training hospitals and provides the majority of specialist regional services to Northern Ireland’s citizens. As such, the number of systems involved and data migrated was extensive, ranging from specialist audiology, ophthalmology and cardiology information to all of the legacy PAS systems’ data.
Egress has been working with encompass since Spring of 2022, contracted to manage the entire programme’s end-to-end data migration requirements. Our work at Belfast followed a successful phase one at the South Eastern Trust, where more than 1.1m records were extracted, transformed, and loaded with a 99.85% success rate achieved.
As the roll out progresses Egress will be working with each Trust in turn. The Northern Trust is next, due to go-live in November 2024.
Once complete the project will transform care across the country with a single, integrated health and social care record for all residents. This will provide a holistic view of a patient, resulting in more informed clinical decision making and, therefore, better outcomes for individuals. In addition, at a later stage of the roll-out, everyone across Northern Ireland will have the opportunity to access their own patient record, using the ‘MyCare’ App.
Joe Rooke, Chief Executive Officer at Egress Group, commented:
“Another significant milestone in the encompass journey, bringing integrated health and social care to all of Northern Ireland’s citizens. Well done to everyone involved in phase two, the successful Epic go-live at Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.
We are delighted with the results of our work, delivering data of the highest quality, migrated so successfully from all of the legacy systems involved, safely into the new EPR system. This achievement is testament to the hard work and dedication of our teams. So often we hear of data migration projects failing, so we are rightly proud of them and our track record of delivering success and never comprising on data integrity and availability.
It has been a pleasure working with the HSCNI teams, as well as other supplier partners. Everyone involved is committed to achieving the very best results for the people of Northern Ireland and we look forward to ensuring the same success is delivered across the remaining three trusts.”
Find out more about encompass here.