Introduction to ePharmacy

Scottish ePharmacy is intended to improve patient care and reduce GPs’ workload by making better use of pharmacists’ skills and expertise, especially for patients requiring long-term medication for chronic conditions.

eAMS and eCMS are names of the ePharmacy solutions supporting the electronic Acute Medication Service and Chronic Medication Service. After pilots in Ayrshire & Arran, it was decided to extend the community pharmacy services, now known as ePharmacy.

Acute Medication Service (AMS) describes the pharmaceutical service provided by community pharmacists and GPs to acute patients by adding electronic support and automated payment for acute prescription items.

The patient attends for an appointment. During the consultation, a decision is taken to create an acute prescription. The patient consent is reviewed and the prescriptions are printed. Once authorised, the prescriptions are given to the patient who has responsibility for taking them to a community pharmacy.

Acutes and repeat issues are handled as AMS prescriptions. These are printed on a GP10 prescription with a barcode. An XML message is transmitted (via AMS) through the NHSnet to the ePharmacy store to await call down by the pharmacist when the patient first presents at the pharmacy. The pharmacy accesses the patient registration details through the central patient registration system.

The pharmacist is then able to scan the bar code to retrieve the corresponding message. If an item is deleted or edited after the initial message has been sent, then further update or cancellation messages are sent.

Note - Neither nurses nor supplementary prescribers in Scotland are authorised to print bar-coded AMS prescriptions.

The Electronic Chronic Medication Service(eCMS) is part of the wider Tranche 4 requirements for NHS Scotland. This scheme allows CMS items to be sent electronically from Vision to the Community Pharmacy (CP), where all subsequent dispensing events can be managed. eCMS is similar to eAMS (electronic Acute Medication Service), but eCMS involves printing a single eCMS GP10 for multiple dispensing events. See Activating eCMS