Consultation on e-prescribing for NHS in England
Draft functional requirements for electronic prescribing (e-prescribing)
in the NHS in England have been published for consultation by NHS Connecting
for Health (PDF 470K).
The 120-page draft document was developed following a series of workshops
earlier this year attended by nearly 500 members of a range of professions
and clinical specialties from 115 NHS organisations. The aim now is to
build national consensus on the draft specification so that it can be
used as a guide for the development of e-prescribing software for use
in hospital and the community. It does not specifically address the needs
of GP prescribing.
The expected benefits of e-prescribing
include a reduction in medication errors as a result of increased legibility
of prescriptions and delivery of computerised guidance to prescribers.
Pharmacist Ann Slee, the clinical lead
for e-prescribing, said: “Different clinical specialties may need
different things from e-prescribing, so each workshop concentrated on
the requirements of up to four clinical specialties. The workshops have
produced a huge amount of relevant material to help identify what is
needed to ensure that future e-prescribing systems meet the needs of
health care professionals.”
The draft includes a number of questions that have been identified as
priorities for the e-prescribing programme. They include:
· Should differences, such as primary care practitioners prescribing
by dosage form and hospital practitioners by dose, be supported in the
long term
· How should alerts and warnings be introduced to avoid over-alerting
and misuse
· What does the NHS summary care record need to contain for communication
across traditional care boundaries
· How should systems support the evolution of non-medical prescribing,
and
· What are the requirements of pharmaceutical care and how should they
be managed and linked into the main patient record?
Comments from anybody interested or involved in prescribing, supplying
or administering medicines can be sent to eprescribing@cfh.nhs.uk until
13 October 2006. |
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Pharmaceutical Journal
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