Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has provided a comprehensive update on the encompass programme, ten months after the digital care record system was successfully rolled out across all five geographic Health and Social Care (HSC) Trusts. Since the final phase of the launch in May 2025, the system has unified patient data into a single, integrated digital record for every citizen in Northern Ireland.

New data made available through the system illustrates the immense scale of daily HSC operations. On a single day in January 2026, the service recorded nearly 120,000 public encounters. This included over 43,000 acute and community appointments, 70,000 domiciliary care calls, 500 surgical procedures, and various district nursing visits.

Beyond data collection, encompass has been credited with enhancing patient safety by lowering medication error rates and accelerating the delivery of test results. System efficiency has also improved as administrative burdens on staff are reduced, allowing for more patient-focused care.

The My Care portal, a key feature of the programme, now has almost 300,000 registered users—representing roughly 15% of the adult population. The portal allows patients to view their appointments, medications, and test results online, which helps reduce the rate of missed appointments and saves the HSC significant resources. Health Minister Mike Nesbitt said: "Given the current funding pressures on the Health budget, being as effective and efficient with the resources we do have is vital to optimise the whole of Northern Ireland's Health and Social Care system. Having high quality and up-to-date data helps us to make informed decisions when looking at the future of how we fund and resource HSC services. encompass provides us with the data to do this."

The Minister also praised the dedication of the workforce: "The scale of activity highlights how hard our staff work right across the Health and Social Care system, demonstrating their commitment to providing a high quality and patient centered service. It has been nearly ten months since Northern Ireland were put at the forefront of health service delivery, when all five geographic Trusts went live on encompass. Having a single digital care record has transformed HSC, for both patients being able to access their health record in one place, and for staff in how we deliver care, transforming patient experience."

Paul Rice, Chief Digital Information Officer at the Department of Health, added: "encompass has changed how we deliver care by making it safer, more connected and more patient-focused by ensuring that the right information is available at the right time. Access to high quality actionable data is vital to planning services that truly meet people's needs and will help us to work more effectively and efficiently."