What is the digital medicines transformation portfolio and why is it needed?
The portfolio is a collection of programmes and projects that individually are tackling all parts of the system that gets medicines to patients in Wales.
It's necessary because medicines are a really important part of healthcare. There are 81 million prescribed items just by GPs alone every year in Wales, and at the moment it's really inefficient, a lot of it is transacted on paper. The portfolio is aiming to make the whole process safer, easier for patients, easier for clinicians, and more efficient all round.
What are the first priorities for the portfolio?
Now that we've established the portfolio, the very first thing we're doing is to make sure that each of the programmes and projects is set up on a sound footing and has the right processes and governance. The other thing is to help join up the thought processes of the four areas to make sure that we understand what all those connections are, and we have a plan to make sure they work together to deliver the overall vision.
As the Digital medicines portfolio starts to launch its services, what will patients notice changing in their care?
One of the first things people will find is when they go to their GP to get a prescription - they won't have to wait for a paper form to be printed out and signed, they'll be able to say to the GP where they would like to collect medicines from, and the prescription will automatically be sent there electronically.
If a person is admitted to hospital, they'll find that the days of the paper medicines chart that used to be clipped to the end of the bed will be a thing of the past. Nurses will be administering the medicines from a digital drug chart which will have been pre-populated with medicines that the patient was already taking when they came to hospital. The doctors will check those to see if they want to carry them on, or make any changes to them.
And when the patient leaves hospital, again the information about the medicines they had in hospital will automatically be transferred to their GP, so no risk of any mistakes in copying down medicines from one system to another.
We also hope that when the NHS Wales App is launched, people will use that to see what medicines they have been prescribed, order their repeat prescriptions and choose which pharmacy they would like to collect them from.
Why did you want to be involved in the digital medicines transformation portfolio?
I have always cared hugely about improving the safety and quality of care in the NHS, and medicines is a big part of that. I genuinely believe that when we complete the work of the portfolio, we will be leaving things in a much better and safer place.
This is a great opportunity to really change the way clinical teams and patients engage with each other over this really important aspect of health care, which is medicines.
