Life Sciences Hub Wales and the country’s Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio have launched a fund to help suppliers of digital community pharmacy systems deliver an electronic prescription service (EPS).
They said it could provide just over £100,000 per supplier to work on three tiers.
The first will be the development and implementation of changes to community pharmacy systems to enable EPS through an assured patient medication record (PMR).
This work must be completed before bidding for support on the second tier, to send push notifications to the NHS Wales App to advise a patient’s medicines are ready for collection, along with the location of the pharmacy and its opening hours.
Third is to help make pharmacy dispensing paperless – although patients should be able to request a paper prescription if they wish.
The development an EPS in primary care is a key element of the Welsh Government backed Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio, and will enable prescribers to send prescriptions directly to a dispenser.
Modernising pharmacy practice
Hamish Laing, senior responsible owner of the portfolio, said: “We are excited to be launching this fund which provides a crucial opportunity to support not just the technical changes needed to implement EPS in Wales but also improvements that will help modernise pharmacy practice and provide a much better service and experience for patients.”
Cari-Anne Quin, chief executive of Life Sciences Hub Wales, commented: “Digitisation of the Welsh prescription service will deliver a safer and more efficient system benefiting patients whilst freeing up vital time and resource for healthcare professionals. We’re proud to be supporting this transformation by managing the fund and award process and look forward to seeing improved service delivery across the nation.”
The fund will be open for bids from UK registered businesses that at least have the potential to supply Welsh pharmacies until October 2024.
