NIECR: Northern Ireland Electronic Care Record

The NIECR is a web-based portal system using Orion Health technology which gives health and social care professionals a single, secure overview of key information about their patients or clients. It extends to the entire Northern Ireland population of 1.8 million. Previously, information was held on paper and a variety of electronic systems across Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care system, which meant that health and social care professionals had a fragmented view of service user information. NIECR solves this problem by aggregating the information already held on clinical systems across Northern Ireland without the need to replace those existing source systems. This aids better, faster, safer decision making and improves the quality and efficiency of the services provided. NIECR enables the secure communication and sharing of key patient data by integrating 500,000 daily messages in real-time from the following HSC systems across acute, community, primary health and social care:
• 8 Patient Administration Systems – Encounter details
• 8 clinical documents systems
• 10 Emergency Department systems
• 5 Out of Hours providers
• 6 Laboratory systems
• 3 Radiology systems
• 350 GP systems – Drugs, Allergies and eReferrals
• Master Patient Index
A patient portal facility is currently being implemented as part of NIECR. Known as My Care Record the portal gives patients access to view specific information regarding their healthcare in a digital format. Through the portal patients can view hospital appointments, have access to a relevant health library, engage with clinicians in goal-setting and document-sharing and view personal information on medication and laboratory results.