Major IT outage delays 1,600 patient appointments

Around 1,600 patient appointments have been postponed owing to an IT outage at the Southern Health and Social Care Trust (SHSCT), Mike Nesbitt, Northern Ireland’s health minister confirmed.

The trust declared a major IT incident on 17 September 2025, which caused disruption to services at sites including Craigavon and Daisy Hill hospitals for two days.

In a statement, published on its website, SHSCT  said: “The trust is currently experiencing significant issues with our IT systems which are having an impact on our services.

“Ambulance diverts have been put in place whilst work continues to further investigate and resolve the issues.

“We are prioritising emergency and critically ill patients at this time.”

It added that planned surgery and out-patient hospital appointments were being postponed and advised people not to come to emergency departments “unless absolutely necessary”.

Following the incident, Nesbitt published a statement on 19 September 2025, which said: “Early indications on the impact to patients are that approximately 1,600 appointments associated with Acute, Elective, Mental Health and Children’s and Young People’s services were postponed over 17-18 September”.

He added that the trust is “working at pace to rebook all postponed appointments as quickly as possible”.

All citizens in Northern Ireland have been able to access a single digital care record since May 2025, following the rollout of the encompass patient record system, built in partnership between Epic and the Northern Ireland HSC.

However, Nesbitt said that contrary to some commentary in social media, the incident was not related to the new digital systems, “but was instead related to the data centres which our systems rely upon”.

He added that there is “no suggestion that this was a cyber related matter”.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Epic said: “The Southern Trust experienced a local IT infrastructure issue affecting their access to the Epic application.

“Epic is not the cause of the issue, and other trusts using Epic are not affected.

“We worked closely with the Southern Trust as they followed their business continuity plans and restored full access to Epic.”

SHST is setting up an Incident Review Group, which Nesbitt said will “look wider than the root cause of the technical issue and consider the steps taken by the trust in advance of the outage and subsequently”.

Nesbitt added: “While a digitally enabled organisation might expect that on occasion issues may arise, the impact on Health and Social Care services can, as was evidenced in this case, be considerable.

“I sincerely regret that it was necessary to postpone planned appointments and to have patients conveyed by ambulance to other HSC facilities as a consequence.”

In June 2025, Nesbitt told Members of the Legislative Assembly that the cost of the encompass digital records system for health trusts in Northern Ireland is to exceed the £300 million originally estimated by £60m.

Digital Health News contacted SHSCT for comment.