Telefónica Tech Reaches Milestone In encompass Contract

Telefónica Tech has achieved a milestone in its five-year IT managed services contract for encompass, the program creating a unified digital care record for all health and social care recipients in Northern Ireland.

This month, Belfast Trust, the largest of its kind in the UK, has implemented a new digital patient record system, replacing traditional paper processes. Previously, the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust was the first to go live in November 2023 under the contract. Over the next two years, encompass will be rolled out across all Trusts in Northern Ireland.

Telefónica Tech, with 330 employees in Belfast, has created 20 new locally-based jobs to support this initiative. They are providing specialised IT hosting and managed services to support encompass, including building and managing the necessary back-end IT infrastructure. This includes hosting and deploying Epic, the leading health record management software and supporting its implementation across all Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland.

Ellen Dickson, VP, Enterprise Health Services at Telefónica Tech UK&I, said: "encompass is a transformational project from an operational and medical point of view, making Northern Ireland the first part of the UK where patients have a single integrated care record. It is a highly complex project and critical to the health and wellbeing of service users in Northern Ireland. It will require the highest levels of service to support the approximately 70,000 staff members who will use the system once it is implemented across all the Trusts. We are very proud to contribute to its implementation in the South Eastern Health & Social Care Trust, and most recently in the Belfast Health & Social Care Trust, the largest Trust of its kind in the UK."

Dr. Dermot Hughes, the Senior Responsible Owner for the encompass programme, recognised the significant contributions of Telefónica Tech to the successful Go-Live at South Eastern and Belfast Trust: "Telefónica Tech have contributed significantly to the successful implementation of the Epic Platform in Northern Ireland. Their dedicated Healthcare focused team have brought experience and a collegiate partnership to the encompass programme. They have grown their Belfast based workforce and have done so by opening opportunities to all."

Belfast-based Telefónica Tech UK&I has a dedicated team for enterprise health services and provides IT managed services to major health trusts across the UK and Ireland, including Cambridge University Hospitals Trust.