MPs call for pharmacists to have access to CRS
Pharmacists in primary and secondary care must be given read-write access to the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS), according to a report from MPs. The All-Party Pharmacy Group’s (APPG) report on the Future of Pharmacy argues that pharmacy needs access to the NCRS to realise its potential as a health service provider and criticises Connecting […]
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Data payments announced for Scottish pharmacists
Community pharmacists in Scotland are to receive payments for ensuring the data quality of their patient records ahead of the introduction of electronic transfer of prescriptions. The Scottish Executive Health Department (SEHD) has released details of phase one of the Contract Preparation Payments (CPP) which focuses on ensuring patient medication records are accurate and up-to-date. […]
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New deal to deploy data mining tool
Quicksilva Software Solutions has secured a deal with life sciences specialists Applied InSilico to deploy their artificial intelligence-based data mining tool called ELE, the Evolutionary Learning Environment, globally. ELE is a data analysis tool capable of reviewing huge and complex volumes of information quickly. This enables it to uncover relationships between diseases and genes and […]
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Independent pharmacists urged to upgrade for EPS
Connecting for Health is urging individual pharmacists to upgrade their systems for release one of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) as soon as possible because of concerns they could be left behind by the major pharmacy retailers. So far about 42% of pharmacies have been enabled for release one of EPS but CfH says it […]
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Careful and cautious progress on Electronic Prescriptions
Tim Donohoe, the head of the NHS Electronic Prescriptions Service programme, tells Fiona Barr why progress will remain ‘careful and cautious’.
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Government backs pharmacist access to EPR
The government has backed plans for pharmacists to be allowed access to electronic patient records but says the public will be consulted on consent and confidentiality issues. Caroline Flint, health minister, told MPs in a Parliamentary written reply last week that the government believed pharmacists would need access to patient records to enable them to […]
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Brown plays a safe hand with electronic scripts
The chancellor Gordon Brown has called for more electronic prescriptions to be issued in the NHS, as part of his campaign to be the next leader of the Labour Party. Brown, the favourite to win the leadership contest, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday that there needed to be “more electronic prescriptions so […]
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Voicemails prompt patients to pick up medicine
A message system that enables pharmacists to leave an automatically-generated voicemail for patients whose prescriptions are ready for collection is to be offered by a major pharmacy systems supplier. Message Dynamics has reached a heads of agreement to integrate its messaging system with Cegedim Rx’s Pharmacy Manager and Nexphase. The agreement covers two Message Dynamics products: the Repeat Rx […]
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Pharmacists reject prescription printing plan
Community pharmacists claim they may still have to print out more than a quarter of prescription tokens when release two of the electronic prescription service (EPS) is introduced later this year. Representatives at the annual conference of the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) passed a motion “rejecting in the strongest terms” the plans to print […]
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Initial sites wanted for the next phase of EPS
NHS Connecting for Health is recruiting primary care trusts to be initial implementation sites for release two of the electronic prescription service. Release two will deliver digital signatures for prescriptions, enable patients to nominate pharmacies, improve electronic repeat dispensing processes and enable GPs to cancel a prescription at any time up until the medication is […]
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