Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of (a) the implementation costs and (b) potential benefits of community pharmacists having write access to NHS patient records.

The Department has made no assessment of the implementation costs of providing write access to patient records. However, in future, our ambition is for pharmacists to play an even greater role within the National Health Service and we understand that write access to NHS patient records will support this.

Providing read and write access to general practitioner (GP) records for pharmacists is complex. In some areas medical records are already shared between professionals to support locally commissioned services. To develop a national solution Departmental officials, NHS England and NHS Digital have considered important issues such as technical requirements, data standards, patient consent and data security to provide write access. Work is progressing and during 2019 pilots will commence to test that digital transfer can successfully take place between community pharmacy and GP IT systems.