The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 275 No 7373 p537
29 October 2005

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News summary

Two-stage strategy for ETP implementation announced by CfH

England's electronic prescription service (EPS) will be implemented (PDF 50K) with the release of software in two stages, NHS Connecting for Health has announced. EPS allowances for pharmacy contractors were published earlier this month (PJ, 15 October, p471).

Software in the first release will contain essential functions only; release 2 software will have additional functions, allowing prescriptions to be digitally signed, and enabling patients to nominate a preferred pharmacy and pharmacists to claim reimbursement electronically.

The two phases of release 1 are:

· Initial implementers This phase began in February with early implementer sites. It was designed to prove the technical stability and safety of the system and look at local prescribing and dispensing processes in the light of ETP

· Nationwide deployment This aims to build the capacity of the service. Electronic prescriptions will operate in parallel with FP10s during this phase. Pharmacists who have ETP-compliant systems will be able to scan the barcode on ETP-enabled FP10s (PJ, 5 March, p259) and retrieve prescription details from the service. Pharmacists who do not have ETP-compliant systems will dispense prescriptions in the usual way — patients can therefore take their prescription to any pharmacy, irrespective of whether that pharmacy is offering ETP.

In release 2, the phases are:

· Transition The aim during this phase is to move towards a service where the electronic prescription dominates, although paper prescriptions will still be necessary in some situations

· Full ETP In the final phase, digitally signed electronic prescriptions will become the legally valid prescription and paper prescriptions will not be issued unless there are specific reasons

In order for the service to operate, pharmacy contractors will need to have an ETP-compliant pharmacy system accredited by CfH, appropriate network connectivity and staff who are registered and trained to operate the system and have been issued with a smartcard.

CfH is aiming to have the service fully operational across England by the end of 2007. A spokesman for CfH told The Journal that he expects that a list of ETP-compliant pharmacy systems for release 1 will be published “in the next couple of weeks”. A more phase-specific timescale for implementation is not yet available.