The NHS Electronic Prescription Service is part of the

NHS National Programme for IT The NHS Connecting for Health (CFH) agency was part of the UK Department of Health and was formed on 1 April 2005, having replaced the former NHS Information Authority. It was part of the Department of Health Informatics Directorate, with the r ...

of the

National Health Service in England The National Health Service (NHS) is the Publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare sy ...

. It enables the electronic transfer of

medical prescription A prescription, often abbreviated or Rx, is a formal communication from physicians or other registered healthcare professionals to a pharmacist, authorizing them to dispense a specific prescription drug for a specific patient. Historicall ...

s from doctors (or other prescribers) to

pharmacies Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

and other dispensers and electronic notification to the reimbursement agency, NHS Prescription Services. Patients may choose to receive a paper prescription if they do not want to specify a pharmacy. In England, electronic repeat dispensing (eRD, also known as "batch prescribing") allows clinicians to authorise and issue a series of repeat prescriptions covering up to 12 months, using a single digital signature.

NHS Scotland NHS Scotland, sometimes styled NHSScotland, is the publicly–funded healthcare system in Scotland and one of the four systems that make up the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It operates 14 territorial NHS boards across Scotland ...

operates a similar scheme, under the name Acute Medication Service (AMS). , prescribing in Wales was still largely paper-based.

History

The roll-out of the service was delivered in two releases: *Release 1 retains the paper prescription and adds a

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...

to it which allows the dispensing pharmacy to access a centrally held copy of the prescription (the barcode does not encode the items prescribed). This phase has been extensively deployed among

general practitioner A general practitioner (GP) is a doctor who is a Consultant (medicine), consultant in general practice. GPs have distinct expertise and experience in providing whole person medical care, whilst managing the complexity, uncertainty and risk ass ...

systems and slightly less so in pharmacy systems. *In Release 2, an electronic prescription can be used where the patient nominates a pharmacy. The prescription can be sent electronically, although a paper token (FP10DT) may be printed off also. Unlike a standard FP10, this is not a legal document, and no drugs can be legally dispensed without the electronic message downloaded from the NHS Spine identified by the unique barcode on the printed form. In August 2018

NHS Digital NHS Digital was the trading name from 2016 of the Health and Social Care Information Centre, which was the national provider of information, data and IT systems for commissioners, analysts and clinicians in health and social care in England, p ...

announced that all the 1,311 eligible GP practices in London could use the service. From November 2019 digital-only prescriptions were introduced across England. In July 2021 it was announced that hospital trusts in England could begin testing electronic prescribing in Autumn 2021. This would enable hospital outpatient prescriptions to be sent electronically to patients’ nominated community pharmacy, and prescriptions to be sent to home care providers. The

Welsh Government The Welsh Government ( ) is the Executive (government), executive arm of the Welsh devolution, devolved government of Wales. The government consists of Cabinet secretary, cabinet secretaries and Minister of State, ministers. It is led by the F ...

confirmed plans in September 2021 to develop ePrescribing in Wales.

Swansea Bay University Health Board Swansea Bay University Health Board (SBUHB) () is the local health board of NHS Wales for Swansea and Neath Port Talbot, in the south-west of Wales. Established as Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board (ABMUHB) in 2009, it was renamed ...

had almost eradicated paper drug charts in 15 medical wards, using Hospital ePrescribing and Medicines Administration. This reduced the time nurses spent on medication rounds and reduced potential errors in prescriptions. In November 2022, it was announced that the NHS Electronic Prescription Service would allow its first Pharmacy app integration (with

Healthera Healthera is a digital health platform, founded in the United Kingdom in 2015. The platform consists of a patient-facing app, a patient-facing website, a pharmacy-facing platform, and several integrations with other healthcare providers. The pla ...

).E-prescription Software Guide
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References

External links

Old Official websiteNew Official website
*{{cite web , url=https://digital.nhs.uk/services/electronic-prescription-service/guidance-for-developers/guidance-for-developers-electronic-prescription-service-overview , title=Electronic Prescription Service overview for developers, website=NHS Digital Electronic prescribing Health informatics in the United Kingdom Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom National Health Service (England) Pharmacy in the United Kingdom