Electronic prescription service ‘approved’ for rollout across Wales
Welsh pharmacies will be able to use a new electronic prescription service (EPS) after “successful testing”, it has been announced.
Prescriptions across Wales are set to be processed “without the need for a paper form” thanks to a new national EPS.
Pharmacy technology supplier Invatech Health announced today (April 18) that its patient medication record (PMR) system “Titan” has become “the first and only service of its kind to be approved for EPS use in Wales”.
The software, created in collaboration with the board of Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW), will allow pharmacies to simplify the “reimbursement process” and lead to “more efficient prescribing, improved stock control, less paper use and reduced risk of errors”, it added.
Invatech Health said that “following successful testing”, the new EPS is primed to “roll out at the more than 700 pharmacies across Wales”.
The company told C+D that EPS functionality will be rolled out across Welsh GP surgeries gradually “over the coming months” but that pharmacies signed up to the Titan system will be unable to use the new technology until their local surgery has an EPS system enabled.
“A new era”
Superintendent pharmacist Geoff Thomas of Malpas Pharmacy in Newport, one of the first pharmacies in South Wales to go live with the new system, said that electronic prescriptions are “the start of a new era” for his team.
“It’s great to see EPS technology signed off for use in Wales – it’s going to make life much easier for patients” and “allow us to continue to develop our businesses and enhance the services we offer,” he added.
Invatech Health’s chief executive and former community pharmacist Tariq Muhammad said he was “delighted” to offer “the first PMR system approved for EPS use in Wales”.
“We’re going to start our work with our customers straightaway so the benefits can be realised as soon as the surgeries come on board”, he added.
The announcement comes after a Welsh EPS pilot was launched at just one GP practice and pharmacy in Rhyl, north-east Wales, in November.
At the time, the Welsh government said that electronic prescriptions would be “gradually rolled out across Wales from January 2024”.
Meanwhile, the first EPS prescription was sent in England 19 years ago.
In 2022, C+D reported that a “small number” of pharmacies in Wales would trial an EPS during the summer of 2023 with an aim to having EPS in all Welsh pharmacies over the next couple of years.
And last January, minister for health and social services Eluned Morgan said that the rollout of an EPS in Wales could begin last summer.
