ePharmacy

Programme Background, Overview and Strategic Context

Background

The ePharmacy Programme plays an important part in delivering the requirements outlined in the pharmacy strategy document The Right Medicine and in underpinning the new community pharmacy contract in Scotland.
The Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions (ETP) Stage 1 Pilot in Ayrshire & Arran Primary Care Trust during 2001/2 and 2002/3 proved the concept of ETP between a single GP Practice and a single Community Pharmacy, and developed a set of system requirements as the basis of future ETP developments.
Having taken into account knowledge obtained from Stage 1, including feedback from community pharmacists and GPs and the necessary associated changes to their computer systems, ETP Stage 2 established a larger base of ETP sites in Ayrshire & Arran. In addition, the project moved forward with developing work streams that would enable ETP to deliver the full benefits of electronic transmission of prescriptions.
With the forthcoming introduction of the new community pharmacy contract in Scotland  the work programme was reviewed in order to ensure that it supported the new contract and was re-badged as the ePharmacy Programme. It is, managed and implemented via the ePharmacy Policy Group.

Overview

The ePharmacy programme provides the infrastructure, applications and support required to deliver a national ePharmacy service.
The ePharmacy Delivery team are responsible for the implementation of solutions to underpin the delivery of the new community pharmacy contract and the associated commitments in The Right Medicine. 
In terms of moving from the previous pilots into the ePharmacy solutions to the services required to support the delivery of the new pharmacy contract then the ETP trial evolves into AMS, the serial dispensing pilots evolve into CMS and the Direct Supply of Medicine pilot evolves into MAS.

Strategic context

• Business drivers

The key business driver is to provide solutions which support the The Right Medicine strategy document and the new community pharmacy contract.

• eHealth IM&T strategy

The solutions being developed and implemented via the ePharmacy programme are complimentary to the NHSScotland IM&T Strategy for IT.
For example, ePharmacy uses the Community Health Index (CHI) number as the key Patient identifier. The Patient Registration System (PRS) links to the CHI system in order to add the CHI number whenever a patient registers for an applicable service at their chosen pharmacy (e.g. registering for MAS or CMS). The CHI number is also passed from a GP system to a pharmacy system whenever a prescription is initiated at a GP site.
ePharmacy prescription data (which includes both prescribing and dispensing data) is passed to PSD for remuneration and reimbursement purposes and to ISD for management information purposes.
ePharmacy is therefore a user of (e.g. CHI)  and a provider of (e.g. payment and ISD data feeds) data which is stored and accessed by NHSS strategic systems.
ePharmacy, however, does not act as a patient data store and also does not provide patient data look-up abilities.

• Size and scope of the project

ePharmacy is a national programme which is working with:

• All GP systems,
• All CP systems,
• PSD DCVP process
• ISD prescribing and dispensing  data warehouses

Once the solutions supporting the services are rolled out on a national basis ePharmacy will continue to support the services on an ongoing basis.
The design of the ePharmacy infrastructure and message protocols assumes changes that will be likely from technology and business led developments. For example digital signatures, is a potential development for the future. The infrastructure delivered by this project is designed to be a user/contributor of any forthcoming changes.

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