National ePrescribing Project
Background
The Department of Health identified digitisation, including ePrescribing, in the National eHealth Strategy (2013) as a key priority for Ireland to align with the vision of bringing improved population wellbeing, health service efficiencies and economic opportunity through the use of technology enabled solutions. ePrescribing is also identified as one of the key critical eHealth and Technology actions of the Sláintecare Programme.
There has been widespread digitisation across GP and pharmacy practices for many years in Ireland with software vendors providing solutions in each individual care setting. These systems operate independently of each other. Emergency legislative changes in March 2020 allowed Healthmail transfer details of a prescription between GP and pharmacies via secure email.
Vision
The vision for the National ePrescribing Project is to establish a single source of truth for prescribing and dispensing information for every patient so that all the information is in one place. This will:
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Facilitate safer prescribing and dispensing of medicines through automated and better access to medicines information
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Facilitate patient knowledge of their medicines
The project has established a governance structure to ensure that citizens, health care professionals, regulators and other stakeholders are collaborated with during the planning and implementation of ePrescribing.
Publications
Past events
- Pharmacy Dispensing Systems and Prescribing Systems Vendor Briefing: Nov 17th and Dec 19th 2023
As the project progresses and more information is available, we will carry out further briefings. Please keep an eye on the ePrescribing website for further information.
The National ePrescribing Team can be contacted at eprescribing@hse.ie
Updated 20/12/2023