The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 279 No 7476 p490
3 November 2007

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Pharmacy adopts digital CD log

Canvey Island community pharmacist Nader Siabi claims to be the first pharmacist to have replaced paper Controlled Drug registers with computerised records.

Mr Siabi told The Journal that the software he is using has been developed by members of his family over the past year and has been approved by the Home Office, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and police chemist inspection officers.

Available from Denward Manufacturing — a company that also makes pharmacy scales and balances — the software costs £300, plus £300 annually for a three-year support service, including updates to satisfy any new legal requirements and data recovery in case of data loss.

Mr Siabi’s three pharmacies stopped using paper records late last week.

The program has been developed as stand-alone software so that chemist inspection officers can inspect a pharmacy’s records without interfering with the normal running of a pharmacy’s dispensary management system. All the inspector needs to do is download the records to another computer for examination.

Mr Siabi said that the programme includes running balances and is a fully auditable, multi-user, password protected system that also features inspection logs following inspectors’ visits, a patient returns log and logs of CDs destroyed and witnessed by authorised persons.