NHS Electronic Prescription Service

The NHS Electronic Prescription Service is part of the NHS National Programme for IT of the National Health Service in England. It enables the electronic transfer of medical prescriptions from doctors (or other prescribers) to pharmacies and other dispensers and electronic notification to the reimbursement agency, NHS Prescription Services.[1]

The project is to be delivered in two releases:

  • Release 1 retains the paper prescription and adds a barcode to it which allows the dispensing pharmacy to access a centrally held copy of the prescription[2] (the barcode does not encode the items prescribed). This phase has been extensively deployed among general practitioner systems and slightly less so in pharmacy systems.
  • In Release 2 an electronic prescription can be used where the patient nominates a pharmacy.[3] 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 announced that all the 1,311 eligible GP practices in London could use the service.[4]

From November 2019 digital-only prescriptions were introduced across England. Patients may choose to have a paper prescription if they do not want to specify a pharmacy.[5]

NHS Scotland implements a similar scheme, under the name Acute Medication Service (AMS).[6]

References
  1. NHS Connecting for Health - What is the Electronic Prescription Service?
  2. NHS Connecting for Health - Electronic Prescription Service - Introducing Release 1
  3. NHS Connecting for Health - Electronic Prescription Service - Introducing Release 2
  4. "Every GP surgery in London now using the Electronic Prescription Service". Pharmaceutical Journal. 9 August 2018. Retrieved 21 September 2018.
  5. "Electronic prescriptions to be introduced nationally from November 2019". Pharmaceutical Journal. 19 October 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2019.
  6. "Acute Medication Service (AMS)". Community Pharmacy Scotland. Retrieved 16 February 2020.
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