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Northern Ireland Connectivity Equivalents

This page tracks GP Connect-like and Spine-like services in Northern Ireland.

Current Reading

Northern Ireland should be read through HSCNI and DHCNI services rather than NHS England GP Connect. The closest functional routes are the Northern Ireland Electronic Care Record, encompass, EpicCare Link, My Care, Health and Care Number / digital identity-service work, NHAIS for GP registrations, and the ePharmacy programme.

GP Connect-Like Routes

Northern Ireland route Closest England comparison What it supports Boundary
Northern Ireland Electronic Care Record Shared clinical record / summary access comparison Secure access to patient health and social care information from multiple HSC organisations. Public page predates full encompass rollout; check current transition before detailed architecture use.
encompass Shared care record / EPR platform comparison Regional single digital care record across HSC Trusts, with all Trusts live by May 2025 in current public evidence. Primary care is currently outside encompass scope.
EpicCare Link GP and professional access comparison Read-only professional access to encompass for GPs and other health professionals. Not GP Connect Access Record; access is to encompass content, not GP practice record APIs.
My Care Patient-facing portal comparison Patient access to information input into encompass. GP records and GP-arranged test results are excluded.
ePharmacy programme EPS / medicines exchange comparison Electronic prescribing and medicines-service direction for Northern Ireland, now framed by BSO as a multi-project programme running through the 2030s. Programme direction; implementation details require current BSO / Department of Health evidence.

Spine-Like Routes

Northern Ireland route Closest Spine service function What it supports Boundary
Health and Care Number NHS Number / PDS identity function Northern Ireland patient identifier equivalent to NHS Number. Archive definition should be paired with current digital identity-service sources.
Digital Identity Service PDS / registration workflow comparison Digitisation of health and care identifier registration workflows. Does not prove a PDS-equivalent API surface.
NHAIS / Caché licensing GP-registration application infrastructure NHAIS applications used primarily for GP registrations, with Caché as underlying database in the procurement notice. InterSystems Caché licensing is not a care-record or GP Connect-equivalent service.
encompass / EpicCare Link / My Care Shared record and access platform Regional record access for HSC Trust care and associated professional/patient portals. Epic/encompass context, not NHS England Spine.
ePharmacy programme EPS / medicines exchange function Electronic prescribing and medicines-service programme. Not England EPS; current programme detail should be checked.

InterSystems Boundary

Northern Ireland has direct InterSystems evidence only for Caché / NHAIS licensing in this evidence set, tracked on InterSystems in Northern Ireland. The current evidence does not show InterSystems involvement in encompass, EpicCare Link, My Care, Health and Care Number, Digital Identity Service, or ePharmacy.

Domain Split Trigger

Before creating a devolved-nations evidence-domain page, recheck the promotion trigger in Source and Evidence Domain Map. This page should remain a country connectivity module unless future work repeatedly needs to traverse all devolved connectivity pages, all InterSystems-by-nation pages, and the canonical registers for the same cross-nation question.

Follow-up Evidence

  • Confirm the post-encompass role of NIECR and whether any public service pages have been superseded.
  • Add technical evidence for Digital Identity Service, HCN lookup, ePharmacy, and EpicCare Link access controls.
  • Recheck whether general practice or primary care enters encompass scope in future DHCNI roadmap material.