95 per cent of prescriptions now electronic

Almost one billion prescription items have been dispensed electronically in the last 12 months, with less than 1 in 20 still paper-based, according to NHS Digital (now merged with NHS England).

The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) issued 996 million (95%) prescriptions in 2021/22, compared with 532 million in 2016/17 when just under half (48%) were still issued on paper.

The number of electronic prescriptions sent to community pharmacies has almost doubled in the past five years, with 11,400 pharmacies now signed up, according to figures highlighted by NHS England to mark the 18th anniversary of the service.

The total number of prescription items dispensed each year has also grown from 1.02 billion in 2016/17 to 1.04 billion in 2021/22, with 11,400 pharmacies now signed up to using the electronic service.

Rahul Singal, Chief Pharmacy and Medicines Information Officer at NHS England, said:

“When you look at the number of transactions that are made via the service and how much it’s revolutionised practice in general practice and community pharmacy, we’d be pushed to think of another national system that’s had more success.

“Our next focus is to introduce EPS into more care settings, including more health settings such as hospital outpatient departments so the benefits can be realised for even more clinicians and patients across the NHS.”

Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust is the first secondary care provider in England to implement EPS. Dr James Briscoe, Consultant Psychiatrist in their Early Intervention team, said:

"It is not too dramatic to state that EPS has revolutionised my practice. I can now write and deliver prescriptions in five minutes compared to the time and effort it took to handwrite a prescription from scratch, arrange for it to be collected by the service user or a member of the team or hand deliver it to a pharmacy. A huge time saving with inbuilt safeguards to enable safe prescribing.”