The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 276 No 7389 p221
25 February 2006

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Do not get left behind, NHS CfH warns contractors

Pharmacy contractors who unduly delay becoming compliant with release 1 of the electronic prescription service (EPS) run the risk of being left behind when release 2 is deployed nationally, Tim Donohoe, group programme director for the National Programme for IT, told The Journal in an interview this week.

“Our key message for contractors is to contact their supplier if they have not already done so. There is nothing to be gained by waiting,” he said. He explained that contractors need to be ready for transition to release 2 later this year, when the potential business and commercial impacts of the EPS will kick in.

It is likely that, as happened with release 1, there will be initial implementer sites for release 2 in order to prove operational readiness of the systems before they are widely deployed. “Essentially what we would do is make sure that there is no commercial disadvantage once release 2 kicked in. But that does mean that we have got to get everybody to release 1 compliance before we can start to move to release 2.” However, Mr Donohoe went on to explain that if 80 per cent of contractors were release 1 compliant, NHS Connecting for Health would not wait indefinitely before moving on to release 2.

NHS CfH is continuing to work with suppliers to get them to a point where their systems are capable of wider deployment. “Most of the key pharmacy systems are at, or approaching, the point where we will be able to do wider deployment,” Mr Donohoe explained. He added that NHS CfH is hoping to see mass take-up of the service over the next couple of months and is working with suppliers to come up with a national deployment plan. “Two pharmacy chains are close to doing fairly large implementations,” he revealed.

The NHS CfH website (www.cfh.nhs.uk) has details of the compliance status of commercially available systems and within the next few days it is hoped that further information about the connectivity suppliers will be published. Mr Donohoe explained that a number of suppliers have already indicated that they will provide an all-in-one package, including system upgrade and network connectivity.

So far, over 400,000 prescriptions have been generated through the service and 240 live sites are issuing barcoded prescriptions. A further 700 sites have the relevant software but are not yet issuing electronic prescriptions.