In the early hours of Saturday 9 July 2022, the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust will roll out their new electronic patient record, Epic, across Northern Devon.

Epic launched across the Royal Devon’s Eastern services in October 2020 and going live across their Northern services provides a single patient record system across the whole of the Trust. This digital milestone has been reached in just one year for Northern Devon, and is the culmination of over four years of work to improve how services are delivered across Eastern and Northern Devon to enable improved, safer, and better-quality care for local people. 

Suzanne Tracey, Chief Executive Officer at the Royal Devon said, “Going live across our Northern services will change the way we deliver care to our local communities, better connecting people and information, so that regardless of where patients are seen or which clinical teams they meet, our staff will be able to access their record quickly and efficiently.

“Epic has already helped us to improve the experience for staff, patients and carers across Eastern Devon, and we are really excited about the difference it will make in Northern Devon too.

“Our digital portal, MY CARE, provides patients or someone they nominate with the ability to view their own care record anywhere and at any time via a smart device. This means that patients will have secure, online access to parts of their medical record, including lists of hospital medication and upcoming hospital appointments. Across Eastern Devon, MY CARE supports people to take more control of their healthcare at just the click of a button, and we’re delighted that the people of Northern Devon will soon be able to benefit from this too.

“I’d like to reassure people that paper communications will still be available for patients who might be concerned about using new technology, or who don’t have access to a smart device. “

“As a newly formed organisation, we have an ambition to be a leading, digitally-enabled teaching hospital Trust. Rolling out Epic across our Northern services takes us a step further on that journey and we’re incredibly proud of all the work our colleagues have done to get us to this important milestone.”

Professor Adrian Harris, Chief Medical Officer said: “"Thank you to all the staff who have worked so hard to make this game-changing transformation possible.

“Having experienced an Epic Go-Live when it was launched across our Eastern services in 2020, we know it is possible that some patients may experience some delays in the period running up to the Go-Live date and for a few weeks afterwards. We ask that patients please bear with us as our staff get used to the new ways of working.

“We’ve put in place a number of safeguards to ensure that throughout the Go-Live period, patient safety is maintained and disruption to patients is minimised as much as possible. This includes going live at 2am to ensure hospital activity is as quiet as possible for the technical switch-on. 

“We have trained over 650 clinical and administrative ‘Super Users’ to assist colleagues during the Go-Live period, and colleagues from our Eastern services as well as partner organisations will be on hand to help to minimise admissions and expedite discharges during this time.”