Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to enable prescriptions to be shared electronically between (1) NHS services, and (2) homecare medicines service providers.

The National Homecare Medicines Committee’s (NHMC) vision for digital transformation, including e-prescribing in homecare, is available in a short video in an online-only format on the YouTube website. The digital subgroup of the NHMC is working with the National Health Service, Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (ePMA) systems vendors and homecare providers to produce an output-based specification for an Electronic Prescribing System (EPS), particularly focusing on the technical aspects of homecare requirements for EPS. This will include interoperable prescribing systems. Any ePMA systems used in secondary care need to be Dictionary of medicines and devices compliant and this applies for homecare medicines too; this is needed to support interoperability.

The output-based specification aims to standardise requirements in homecare medicines e-prescribing, accelerating adoption of e-prescribing system development in homecare. This specification is undergoing final review by NHS England before publication by the NHMC.