Lloyds Pharmacy has received technical accreditation and authorisation to deploy from Connecting for Health to connect its in-house pharmacy system to the national spine-based Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).
The receipt of accreditation marks a significant milestone in the roll-out of the national EPS service which focuses on electronic processing of prescriptions written by GPs.
Eventually the service should make it far easier for patients to get repeat prescriptions at a dispensing chemist of their choice and eliminate much of the cost involved in the current cumbersome paper-based prescription processes.
The in-house Lloyds Pharmacy system has not only received technical accreditation, but been successfully implemented at an initial site and received subsequent roll-out authority.
Lloyds Pharmacy is the largest community pharmacy operator in the UK, with over 1,520 pharmacies. The majority of these pharmacies are located in the community and within health centres.
According to CfH only systems that have been granted roll out authority will meet the requirements for funding payable under the community pharmacy contractual framework.
The commercially available systems that have so far received technical accreditation from CfH are supplied by AAH, Ascibe Plc, Cegedim RX, Fusion Health, Hadley Healthcare Solutions, Positive Solutions, RX Systems and Systems Solutions. Full details are available at link.