The first electronic prescription service has launched in Wales.

Patients in Rhyl will benefit from a new electronic prescription service, which allows GPs to send prescriptions securely online to the patient’s choice of community pharmacy, without the need for a paper form.

The new service makes the prescribing and dispensing of medicines for patients and healthcare professionals easier, safer and more efficient.

This is the first time in Wales that GPs will no longer have to physically print, sign and hand a green paper prescription form to the patient or wait for it to be taken to the pharmacy. Now the prescription is sent electronically from the surgery via the IT system to the patient’s chosen pharmacy.

It is hoped the new system will save up to 40 million paper forms from being printed and handled each year.

The service will be gradually rolled out across Wales from January 2024.

Visiting the first GP practice and community pharmacy to use electronic prescriptions, Rhyl’s Lakeside Medical Centre and Wellington Road Pharmacy, minister for health and social services Eluned Morgan MS said: :We are at the start of an exciting digital transformation that will completely change the way prescriptions are managed in primary care, streamlining a process that has not altered significantly in decades.

"Electronic prescriptions will make a huge difference to the NHS and patients and is a major milestone in our journey towards digitising every prescription in every healthcare setting across Wales.

"I would like to thank the staff at both the GP practice and pharmacy for their support as the first adopters of the Electronic Prescription Service technology and I hope we can explore how other primary care settings can use digital prescribing."