Showing the risks and opportunities of electronic prescribing for GPs and pharmacies

Through this discovery, we hope to show health boards and local implementation teams the risks and opportunities of moving to electronic prescribing systems in primary care settings (GP practices and local pharmacies), so they can:

• prepare safely
• select the best options
• implement in a way that provides most benefit

A significant amount of the prescribing process is paper-based, but it will soon be moving towards a technology known as the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).

This work is a key part of the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio (DMTP) which aims to make the prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines everywhere in Wales easier, safer, more efficient and effective.

This brings new opportunities to improve safety, as well as to improve the experience for patients and clinicians.

But there are also constraints, new user needs, the ‘messy reality’ of day-to-day ways of working and existing systems and processes, barriers and drawbacks to understand.

Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) are our partner in the discovery.

We worked with subject matter experts from the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio and conducted user research with the people who are directly involved in prescribing, dispensing, administering or receiving medicines in primary care settings - including GP practices and local pharmacies.

We:

• built up a view of the end-to-end service and gained a better understanding of our service users through user research
• visited pharmacies and GP practices across Wales - spaeking to the healthcare professionals who are involved in each setting and to the people who need medicine
• built a picture of what might need to change, and what the opportunities are for improvement

We also wrote recommendations for DHCW's primary care team for them to take forward.