Joseph Brant Hospital announced on Nov. 1, 2026 that it has launched Dovetale, the Epic-based system from St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton, as the central milestone of its Project Harmony. Patient records on the MyDovetale portal begin with care received on or after Nov. 1, and older records do not automatically appear in the new portal.
A shared record means clinicians work from the same chart across organizations instead of reconciling separate ones. But the value of that shared view arrives only after the hardest day in any hospital technology project: the day the old way stops and the new way is simply how care gets documented.
On go-live day, the software is finished. The support plan is what goes live.
Cutover is a staffing exercise. Super-users on each unit, at-the-elbow help during the first shifts, and fast answers at the moment a nurse or physician is stuck decide whether staff trust the system or work around it. That on-site, floor-level support is the core of KSPACE TECHNOLOGIES' field operations services during major system rollouts.
The portal detail matters for patients too. Being told plainly that records start with care from Nov. 1, and that older records do not automatically appear, prevents the confusion and calls that otherwise land on front-line staff in the first weeks.
Any hospital planning a shared-record launch should budget its go-live around people on the floor, not licences on a server, and brief patients on exactly what the new portal will and will not show.