Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to (1) expand the use of electronic repeat dispensing in the community pharmacy sector, and (2) optimise the use of technology to make community pharmacies fully integrated with other parts of the NHS.

All community pharmacies in England providing NHS services are required to provide electronic repeat dispensing (eRD) as an essential service. We are encouraging general practitioner (GP) practices to use eRD where clinically appropriate and Academic Health Science Networks have been supporting this. As well as reducing GP workload and being more convenient for patients, eRD preserves medicine supplies and makes better use of pharmacists in managing patients’ repeat medication. During COVID-19 we have put in place arrangements to convert electronic prescriptions to eRD where clinically appropriate. Temporary changes to the need for patient consent to enable increased use of electronic repeat dispensing were announced on 4 June 2020.

Building on the foundations delivered under the Integrating Pharmacy across Care Settings programme, we are working with NHSX and NHS Digital to further expand and enhance the digital integration of community pharmacy. Community pharmacies already receive referrals from 111 (telephony or 111 online) to deliver the Community Pharmacy Consultation Service and we are considering how this capability can be extended to incorporate referrals from other areas, for example, general practice. In addition, we are developing the standards and technical requirements for IT system suppliers to develop the interoperability to support the transfer of information between community pharmacy and general practice systems. The priority data sets for this work include flu vaccinations and the emergency supply of medicines.