For more than 60 years, medicines have been dispensed in Wales via green paper prescription forms – up to 40 million each year. But from today (Friday, November 17), patients in a North Wales seaside town will no longer need paper slips or have to rely on hastily scrawled GP prescriptions.
They will be the first in the country to have access to a new electronic prescription service (EPS) that will be rolled out across the rest of Wales next year. For the first time, GPs in Rhyl, Denbighshire, will no longer have to physically print, sign and hand green paper prescription forms to patients. Neither will they have to wait for them to be taken to pharmacies.
Instead, prescriptions will be sent electronically from the surgery to the patient’s chosen pharmacy. It should mean fewers visit to GP surgeries and a lot less wasted paper.
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Launching the new service at a pharmacy in the town was health and social services minister Eluned Morgan. “We are at the start of an exciting digital transformation,” she said. “It will completely change the way prescriptions are managed in primary care, streamlining a process that has not altered significantly in decades.”
Wales has lagged behind England in the adoption of an EPS, where the system first went live in 2009 at a GP surgery in Leeds. By 2021 all medical prescriptions in England were fully digital. Its implementation there was expected to save the NHS £300m by increasing efficiencies, cutting paperwork and reducing and prescribing errors.
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In Wales, the new service will be gradually rolled out from January 2024. It is part of a wider commitment to introduce digital medicines and e-prescribing in all hospitals and primary care settings in Wales.
NHS Wales worked with NHS England to adopt solutions used already by GP practices and pharmacies across England. The initial focus is to deploy EPS to GP practices, dispensing doctors, community pharmacies and dispensing appliance contractors.
When the EPS was first trailed in 2005 at a Co-op pharmacy in Keighley, West Yorkshire, staff there began “dancing around the aisles” when the system worked. From today, GPs at Rhyl’s Lakeside Medical Centre, and staff at Wellington Road Pharmacy, will have the chance to perform their own jigs after delivering the first e-prescription in Wales.
Baroness Morgan visited both to launch the initiative. She said: “Electronic prescriptions will make a huge difference to the NHS and patients and is a major milestone in our journey towards digitising every prescription in every healthcare setting across Wales.”
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Andrew Evans, chief pharmaceutical officer for Wales, said the new primary care EPS is being trialled in Rhyl ahead of the wider roll-out. “It is critical these changes are introduced safely, which is why this live phase of testing is so important,” he said.
The launch of e-prescriptions in Wales follows 20 months of work by the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio (DMTP). Five suppliers of digital community pharmacy system have so far been awarded grants to develop the system in Wales, and integrate it with the new NHS Wales app.
Prof Hamish Laing, DMTP’s senior responsible owner, said Rhyl’s EPS launch was a “key milestone” in attempts to digitalise all medicines management in Wales. He added: “We have seen a real desire and commitment from GPs and community pharmacists to adopt this – and from the software companies involved to make the necessary changes to their systems as soon as possible.”
