The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7433 p4
6 January 2007

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“EPS Update”

Regular IT updates initiated

Regular updates on implementation of the electronic prescription service are now being issued by NHS Connecting for Health.

The first issue of the monthly newsletter was published at the end of last year and reveals that 35 per cent of community pharmacies have had their software upgraded to enable operation of release 1 of the service (where electronic prescriptions operate in parallel with FP10s). Release 2 functionality, including electronic signatures and nomination of pharmacies, has been possible within the national database, or spine, since August 2006, although software is yet to be rolled out.

The newsletter also says that a test claim message has been successfully received by the NHS Business Services Authority Prescription Pricing Division. A total of 1,128 community pharmacies are operationally live and 113,359 electronic prescriptions have been dispensed.