Leicester General Hospital has deployed a mobile electronic prescribing and medicines administration (EPMA) system.

The latest deployment is part of the hospital’s EPR programme, which is a collaboration between clinical and technical teams at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and the Nervecentre software development team with the aim of building a mobile first digital patient record system

The new EPMA module has initially gone live on three renal wards with a wider roll-out planned to the rest of the trust over the coming months.

Andy Carruthers, the trust’s CIO, said: “The rollout of our brand new e-prescribing module is a really exciting step forward in our EPR journey with Nervecentre. It is great to see it in use out on the wards, and the fact that our teams have made a significant and enthusiastic contribution to the development process is great to see.

“Key benefits of the new e-prescribing system are the ease of use and enhanced capabilities including barcode scanning from mobile devices, particularly helpful for nursing staff when doing the drugs round and we have had some really positive feedback about this from our teams.”

Nervecentre’s mobile EPMA tools allow hospital staff to capture and access data whenever they need to, wherever they are.

The system incorporates the NHS’ Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d) ensuring information exchanges with prescribing systems in other care settings are standardised, and that it uses common drug codes and language. This empowers mobile prescribing and means doctors have rapid access to the national dictionary, local formularies and clinical decision support.

Finally, the system maximises familiar technology to help clinicians meet falsified medicines directive requirements to barcode scan medicines at the point of care. Ward staff can use the built-in camera on standard mobile devices to scan GS1 barcodes at the bedside.