ePharmacy - Scotland

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

Acute Medication Service (AMS) and Chronic Medication Service (CMS) are the ePharmacy solutions.

• Acute Medication Service (AMS) is 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. If a prescription is required, the patient consent is reviewed and the prescription(s) 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 a pharmacist when the patient presents at the pharmacy. The pharmacy accesses the patient registration details through the central patient registration system.

  The pharmacist then scans the barcode 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.

• The Chronic Medication Service (CMS) allows CMS items to be sent electronically from Vision 3 to the Community Pharmacy (CP), where all subsequent dispensing events are managed. CMS is similar to AMS, but CMS involves printing a single CMS GP10 for multiple dispensing events.