The Digital Prescription Service has allotted almost one billion objects within the final 12 months, making it the default technique for prescribing and meting out prescriptions in main care in England.
In response to figures from NHS England, the variety of digital prescriptions despatched to neighborhood pharmacies has virtually doubled up to now 5 years. In 2021/22 nearly all of prescriptions have been issued electronically – 996 million or 95%. Compared, in 2016/17 there have been 532 million points electronically, representing simply over half of all prescriptions that 12 months.
The Digital Prescription Service permits clinicians to ship prescriptions electronically to a pharmacy of the affected person’s selecting. This makes the method of prescribing and meting out medicines extra environment friendly and handy for sufferers and employees. At the moment, lower than one in 20 prescriptions remains to be paper-based.
The primary digital prescription was despatched 18 years in the past, from Ling Home Medical Centre in Keighley, West Yorkshire. Dr Rabani, GP on the centre, mentioned: “The Digital Prescription Service for us generally follow actually has been a game-changer. Gone are the times of spending our lunch breaks signing reams of repeat prescriptions by hand.
“By way of affected person security, if we alter or cancel a prescription we are able to amend it within the system as an alternative of phoning the pharmacy and ensuring the paper slip is destroyed. And it’s been helpful for my out-of-hours follow as properly. I can look within the system to see the opening hours and addresses of pharmacies to assist resolve which is probably the most handy one for my affected person to ship their prescription to.”
In addition to saving clinicians time, the service additionally has inbuilt safeguards to assist safer prescribing.
Rahul Singal, chief pharmacy and medicines data officer, NHS England, mentioned: “Whenever you take a look at the variety of transactions which can be made through the service and the way a lot it’s revolutionised follow generally follow and neighborhood pharmacy, we’d be pushing to consider one other nationwide system that’s had extra success.”
NHS England is now specializing in bringing the Digital Prescription Service to extra care settings so much more clinicians and sufferers within the NHS can expertise the advantages. The primary secondary care supplier in England to implement the system is Midlands Partnership NHS Basis Belief.
A complete of 11,400 pharmacies at the moment are signed up to make use of the digital service, with Portsmouth the first area in the country to offer electronic prescriptions to all sufferers.
