Our portfolio vision:
“Making the prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines everywhere in Wales, easier, safer, more efficient and effective, through digital.”
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WELCOME TO THE SECOND EDITION OF THE DIGITAL MEDICINES TRANSFORMATION PORTFOLIO
NEWSLETTER
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We want to keep you informed with news and information from all the projects and programmes in the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio (DMTP). This edition focuses on the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service (EPS).
You can view this newsletter via the DMTP webpages, or you can subscribe and receive it directly into your inbox.
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DIGITAL MEDICINES TRANSFORMATION PORTFOLIO (DMTP) |
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Introduction to the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) |
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Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service
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The way people collect prescriptions and receive their medication in Wales is changing from a paper-based process to a fully digital service. |
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Currently in Wales, GPs and other prescribers in primary care, such as dentists and optometrists, print and sign paper prescriptions which are given to a pharmacy in exchange for medications and which enable payments to be made to the pharmacy or dispenser. The EPS programme will make this entire end to end process electronic, making the prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines everywhere in Wales, easier, safer, more efficient and effective through digital.
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Why an electronic prescription service?
More than 80 million items were prescribed in GP surgeries and dispensed in the community in Wales in 2021, and £963.6 million was spent on prescribing medicines in Wales in 2021.
Transforming the current paper-based process to a fully digital service will bring a range of benefits to healthcare professionals and patients. For example, an electronic prescription service will save time for GPs through digital signing, giving them more time for patient care, and no patients will need to attend a surgery just to collect a prescription form. Instead, a patient can pick up their prescription directly from a pharmacy of their choice. It also enables the safer management of repeat medication, provides greater security and improves the potential for patient centred innovations and efficiencies in the medicines’ management process.
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How will the Electronic Prescription Service work?
NHS Wales will adopt the service used by GP practices, community pharmacies and patients across England, and work in partnership with NHS Digital and other key stakeholders to enable the service to work across Wales. The initial focus of the programme will be to deploy EPS to GP practices, dispensing doctors community pharmacies and dispensing appliance contractors across Wales.
NHS Wales will also work in partnership with NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership to deliver a technical solution that enables continuity of electronic claims and reimbursement.
For patients, it means they won’t have to wait for a paper form to be printed out and signed. They will be able to say to their GP what pharmacy they would like to collect their medicines from, and the prescription will be sent there electronically.
The EPS programme is working in partnership with NHS Digital and NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership, and with ten different suppliers of GP and Pharmacy systems, as well as four appliance dispensers, to establish the new process. A technical proof of concept is planned for Spring 2023.
This will be followed by a national roll out across all GP practices and pharmacies from Summer 2023.
The programme is planning to include general dental practitioners and other non-medical prescribers in a later phase.
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Pharmacy System Suppliers event |
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Pharmacy System Suppliers to Wales were invited to join a special event on August 30, 2022.
The event, which was held at the Life Sciences Hub Wales in Cardiff Bay, explained more about the plans to introduce EPS for primary care and how pharmacy system suppliers can support it.
The next step is for all pharmacy system suppliers to NHS Wales to develop their systems to be compliant with both the current and future version of EPS and the event focused on the requirements for this to happen. It also provided details of early implementation plans.
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Introducing the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service team
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Senior Responsible Owner (SRO)
Jenny Pugh-Jones
Jenny is Clinical Director of Pharmacy and Medicines Management at Hywel Dda University Health Board, following a career gaining experience across all settings from community pharmacy, GP practice and most recently, as a leader of pharmacy services across an integrated health board.
She is excited to be SRO and leading on the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) development and implementation for Wales , understanding that moving to digital systems will provide opportunities to improve and transform services with a positive impact on patient safety and care.
She is a Faculty Fellow of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and currently SRO of the Community Pharmacy Digital Applications Board.
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Programme Manager
Mat Friedlander Moseley
After nearly five years delivering a complex, multi-million pound offshore construction project, Mat joined DHCW in May 2021. In June 2022, Mat joined the Digital Medicines Transformation Portfolio as Programme Manager responsible for delivering EPS. Mat brings with him a huge amount of experience of co-creation and co-delivery of highly complex projects and programmes involving a large number of stakeholders.
After spending time working in the private sector in a very different industry, Mat decided to test his transferrable programme management skills and join DHCW. Seeing how the NHS reacted to the global pandemic and was able to offer world-leading digital solutions to complex problems faced by patients every day inspired Mat to take on a new challenge and it’s one that he is really enjoying.
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Project Manager
Leanne Jones
Leanne has spent 25 years of her career in project and programme management roles within both the public and private sector.
During her time at the University of South Wales, as European Development Manager she secured £16m funding for 25 externally funded projects. In addition, as Programme Manager she was responsible for the successful delivery of a pan-Wales £28m work-based learning programme. Leanne had also worked in Admiral as Portfolio Manager and subsequently Strategic Programme Manager in an agile environment.
She has a Masters qualification in Professional Development and is a qualified PRINCE2 and Agile programme management practitioner. Leanne is excited to have joined NHS Wales and to be part of a programme that will transform the daily lives of patients in Wales.
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Introducing the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service team |
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Project Support Officer
Paul Burland
Paul is new to DHCW and the healthcare sector, having joined in April this year. He previously spent 20 years working in manufacturing and construction, managing people and projects to demanding schedules. He has a wealth of experience implementing IT projects that cover a broad range of systems and processes including customer relations management, finance and accounts, HR, manufacturing scheduling, inventory control and customer-facing integrations.
Paul has a HND in computer science and a BSc in logistics and supply chain management from Swansea University. Paul is committed to improving services to increase efficiency and product quality. He enjoys a new challenge, is adaptable to changing environments and can appreciate and understand outside factors that may influence projects.
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Project Support Officer
Rachael Bevis
Rachael has previously worked as a Project Manager and Clinical Analyst at North Bristol NHS Trust, where she implemented systems for E-Rostering and Pathology Requesting and Reporting, supported the centralisation of the Trust’s medical records departments and the merge to a single patient number, and customised the order communications system to produce patient wristbands.
Rachael has also worked clinically in the NHS in England and Wales, including Aneurin Bevan, Cardiff and Vale and Swansea Bay University Health Boards, and has spent several years working in NHS Information Management with a specialism in workforce information. She has also worked in the private sector as an Analyst/Programmer and Implementation Consultant. Rachael enjoys solving problems and implementing solutions to support patients and clinicians within the NHS.
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National Clinical Informatics Lead (Community Pharmacy)
Jodine Fec
After gaining her Masters in Pharmacy at Cardiff University in 2001, Jodine completed her pre-registration training in community pharmacy and went on to build a successful community pharmacy business in Mid Wales.
Since leaving her position of Superintendent pharmacist in 2014, Jodine has worked within NHS Wales across primary care, secondary care, and mental health services in senior management and clinical roles, and joined DHCW in August 2022. Jodine brings with her a wealth of experience and passion for pharmacy, optimising patient care, and championing digital solutions.
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Look out for more introductions…
In the next edition of the DMTP newsletter we will introduce the Secondary Care Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration team.
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Secondary Care Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration
Multi-vendor framework to support hospital e-prescribing
A multi-vendor framework for e-prescribing in secondary care (ePMA) is to be established by Digital Health and Care Wales, on behalf of NHS Wales health boards and Velindre University NHS Trust.
Open Principles - Secondary care (ePMA)
Using an open digital ecosystem can make it easier to build applications that support safe, high quality compassionate care as it allows applications and services from multiple vendors to work together for an individual user.
Open standards also support the sharing of patient information digitally with new and existing digital infrastructure. Users will seamlessly access the hospital electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems via health board and trust’s portals/systems or via the Welsh Clinical Portal.
The DMTP architecture team are working closely with the information team to specify the standards to be adopted for medicines and allergies. This includes holding workshops with clinicians and other healthcare professionals from health boards and trusts to gather user cases and requirements. These will be brought together in a technical design which will describe how the system will perform.
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ePMA Programme Manager appointed
Jonathan Pinkney has been appointed as Programme Manager on the Secondary Care Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration programme (ePMA). He joins the programme from DHCW’s Single Record product area where he was Programme Manager responsible for delivering new functionality into secondary care clinical applications, including leading on the award-winning Welsh Nursing Care Record project. Jon is passionate about bringing digital solutions into secondary care settings, and ultimately improving services for health professionals, and for patients.
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User research, collaboration and information gathering are a key focus of the project, and a series of stakeholder workshops with clinical users have already taken place to gather data, use cases and requirements.
More workshops are planned for the Autumn, with another cohort of clinicians, to help to build and shape the outcome and design of the Shared Medicines Record.
The vision is to deliver a Shared Medicines Record to present the patients medicine view in a clinically useful context to better share medicines information across care providers, regardless of where these medicines originated or are managed from. This is dependent on implementation of a consistent language for recording and storing medicines information. Data from all clinical systems using medicines will be ‘written’ to the shared medicines record and supported by system logic and will be made available to other clinicians caring for that patient in other care settings. The detail of the data to be captured and stored will be informed by user research.
Developing a user-centred service approach
Between now and the end of the year, DMTP is partnering with the Centre for Digital Public Services (CDPS) on user research and service design to establish a greater understanding of the needs and preferences of patients and health care professionals across Wales.
The aim of the work is to identify opportunities for end-to-end improvements to new digital solutions and services, based on important user feedback and experience. With an initial focus on primary care, teams across DHCW and CDPS have commenced user research and service design work on cross border prescriptions and dispensing processes, before exploring the impact of service implementation in secondary care and patient access.
Rhian Hamer, Portfolio Director of DMTP, says: “Putting patients and healthcare professionals at the heart of our design is essential to delivering effective services that work for the people who use them.
“We are thrilled to be working with the CDPS and look forward to putting the findings into action.”
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Pictured: Steffan John, Community Pharmacist, and DMTP Portfolio Director, Rhian Hamer visiting a pharmacy in Blaenau Ffestiniog. |
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Engagement and collaboration are at the core of the DMTP portfolio. The team have been out and about meeting as many people as possible, with a view to shaping the programmes of work, and establishing partnerships. Here’s a flavour of some of the ongoing engagement activities…
The Primary Care team has been visiting GP practices and pharmacies discussing the potential impact of EPS with a range of health and care professionals; from clinicians and nursing practitioners to pharmacists and technicians. The visits aim to give the team members first -hand experience of working with patients, prescriptions and medications, and to understand the environment, helping them to make informed decisions.
In June, portfolio SRO, Hamish Laing gave a presentation about the plans and vision of the DMTP to the MediWales Connects conference. He also gave presentations to Community Pharmacy Wales (CPW) and the Welsh Medical Council (WMC). In July, DMTP Programme Lead, Laurence James gave a talk to Digital Health and Care Wales staff about the work of DMTP and took part in a Q&A session following the presentation.
Up and coming engagement activities
If you’d like to know more, or have a suggestion for DMTP engagement, we’d love to hear from you.
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DMTP web page
Our DMTP web page has been launched and we will be posting lots more information as the portfolio progresses.
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