Issue No 2 - January 2009
ePharmacy Programme Update
The Acute Medication Service (AMS) is now largely complete with one remaining GP system supplier and one Pharmacy systems supplier in final stages of rollout. Full service will be completed early 2009. The focus of the programme will now be to assist Community Pharmacies (CPs) to fully utitlise AMS (Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions - (ETP) and fine tune the 'e' support to ensure most efficient use of the technology end to end.
The Chronic Medication Service (CMS) continues in test for the GP suppliers. The first supplier has now gone through a successful business review test, which looks at how CMS will fit into GP Practice processes and also elements such as Clinical Safety.
All GP suppliers remain on track to be ready for the first Beta tests in quarter one of this year, once the first pharmacy systems are ready.
The ePharmacy Infrastructure, including the Patient Registration System (PRS) and ePharmacy Message Store (ePMS) is well on track to support the introduction of CMS.
It is key to the success and benefit realisation of ETP that we continue to work closely with representatives of General Practice and Community Pharmacy in all our CMS communications, as well as the NHS Boards, General Medical Services and Pharmacy Facilitators, so that the service and technology support are fully understood and implemented as efficiently as possible. While there are differing working practices in use, we have generic and best practice guidelines that we can communicate to make a real difference in confidence and minimise the impact of change.