Northern Ireland secures specialist support for largest-ever digital transformation programme
Tegria and Cloud21 to deliver UK's first fully-intgrated electronic health and care record across all services
Health and Social Care Northern Ireland (HSCNI) has enlisted the support of technology specialist, Tegria, and digital health consultancy, Cloud21, in a deal to support its national digital transformation programme.
The organisations will help to deliver Northern Ireland’s Encompass programme – a decade-long initiative that aims to deliver improvements to outcomes for patients by making it easier for health and care professionals to deliver high-quality and safe care, improved efficiencies, and greater collaboration across all care settings.
Under the agreement, Tegria’s US-based experts working alongside Cloud21 in the UK, will use their combined experience and depth of knowledge as a transformation and enablement partner to hundreds of organisations across the world.
By providing strategic guidance, programme readiness, and EPR implementation expertise, they will support Northern Ireland in becoming the first UK country, and the second in Western Europe, to implement a fully-integrated electronic health and care record across acute physical services, mental health, community care, and social services.
It will replace a patchwork of legacy systems and paper-based processes with a complete picture of a patient’s health and social care.
Chief digital information officer (CDIO) for health and care in Northern Ireland, Dan West, said: “Tegria and Cloud21 stood out because of their strong understanding of the challenges that we face with such a large-scale and radical digital transformation initiative.
“They quickly provided us with strategic leadership at a challenging time in the programme, while health and care systems across the world were dealing with the impact of the COVID pandemic.
“They brought people who understand large-scale implementation and clinical transformation programmes to help us build a more-sustainable and resilient service through digital.”
Justin Jozwik, managing director of Tegria, added: “Our experience in the US with the operational and cultural challenges of large-scale digital transformation across health and care systems nationally, combined with Cloud21’s hands-on experience in the UK, means together we are well placed to support HSCNI’s Encompass programme and provide high-quality strategic guidance, as well as the practical expertise that Tegria and Cloud 21 are well-known for.”
And Dr Tony Corkett, chief executive of Cloud21, said: “The HSCNI is leading the way in advocating that every technology programme needs equal funding and support for people, processes, and change management to be successful, and a national transformation programme of this scale is no exception.”