Pharmacy IT must evolve for future contract needs
Key to finding the most appropriate IT system to support the new community
pharmacy contract is identifying one that will evolve over time to meet both current and future needs, according to Nick Strong, managing director of Systems Solutions.
“It is important that your IT supplier has a roadmap of ideas and
features that will be added to your IT system over time,” he says. “This
roadmap should be reviewed regularly, with new features being added to
the system at least once a year.”
Systems Solutions has carried out a survey of 400 UK pharmacists that
identifies repeat dispensing, smoking cessation, minor ailments schemes,
prescription intervention services, medication disposal and medicines
use reviews as the services pharmacists are most interested in providing.
Mr Strong believes that there are a number of minimum features that a
pharmacy IT system should have in order to provide these services.
The repeat dispensing functions should be capable of keeping track of
multiple repeats and, in order to assist scheduling, be able to link
repeat management to the prescription collection service.
The software should also prompt the user to ask patients whether their
medicines are still required and record if any changes are made.
To enable pharmacists to identify patient groups to whom they can provide
enhanced services, the system should be able to record patients’ lifestyle
information, Mr Strong says. This function is also useful for running
a minor ailments scheme.
The system will need to be able to register patients and be capable of
storing and printing registration forms, pre-printed prescriptions and
support minor ailments scheme reporting. In addition, it should contain
endorsement software that is able to recognise drugs for minor ailments,
he adds. |
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