Digital is being used as a force for good in health and care in Wales, with exciting, transformative programmes taking shape in primary and secondary care.
Rebecca Lees
Senior Communications Officer, Digital Health and Care Wales
Our Digital Medicines Programmes are revolutionising medicines management to make things easier, safer and more efficient for patients and healthcare professionals through digital, with significant milestones reached in the last two years.
One of these is the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Programme, an ambitious plan to replace the traditional green paper prescription form with a digitised process. We are proud to have partnered with Life Sciences Hub Wales since before the launch of EPS, demonstrating how success can be achieved through innovative thinking, collaboration and shared values.
EPS allows prescribers from GP practices to send prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy or dispenser of the patient’s choice. There is no need for the paper form to be printed and collected from the surgery, and healthcare staff can track where a prescription is at any point. It frees up valuable time for patient care and aims to reduce the amount of paper printed by NHS Wales.
It might feel as though EPS has been a long time coming to Wales, but it is a complex process involving a number of partners. To date, seven pharmacy system suppliers and one GP supplier have been assured to roll out their EPS software here. This has involved significant development and testing taking place to ensure each system meets NHS Wales’ standards and compliance.
Central to implementation has been the Community Pharmacy System Innovation Fund (CPSIF), established by LSHW and Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) on behalf of Welsh Government. It opened in April 2023 to provide grants to help community pharmacy system suppliers develop their software to use EPS.
CPSIF aims to foster innovation and incentivise suppliers through its tiered grant system. The highest incentive involves the implementation of EPS – the primary outcome – while additional incentives revolve around the secondary outcomes of demonstrating a paperless prescription journey and enabling ‘prescription ready’ notifications via the NHS Wales App.
The tiers are:
- Tier 1: Implement EPS - activities required to implement EPS in community pharmacies and dispensing appliance contractors (DACs) in Wales. This includes all existing functionalities available in England and specific Welsh requirements. Successful processing of a live EPS script in Wales, and successful completion of the Wales EPS assurance process, marked the completion of this tier.
- Tier 2: Paperless prescription journey - developments aimed at minimising paper use in pharmacies, resulting in a paperless prescription journey, excluding the option for patients to request a paper dispensing token. Completion of this tier will be demonstrated by a paperless prescription journey.
- Tier 3: Push notification - development of a mechanism within the community pharmacy Patient Medication Record (PMR) system to send push notifications via the NHS Wales App, informing patients that their medicines are ready. Completion of this tier will be demonstrated by a conformant message available on the NHS Wales App's Application Programming Interface (API).
Life Sciences Hub Wales handles the administration, manages the funds and reports to Welsh Government on the delivery of the grant scheme. DHCW oversees the technical requirements, monitors the use of funded outputs and evaluates outcomes once projects are completed.
In 2023, the Fund awarded its first grants, with six suppliers in total receiving Tier 1. Following rigorous testing, three of these system suppliers were approved to roll out their software in Wales, with three more following in January 2025 through Tier 1.
The collaborative approach between Life Sciences Hub Wales and DHCW has ensured that the funding scheme has been efficiently managed, bringing benefits to patients and healthcare staff as quickly and safely as possible. CPSIF has played a crucial role in encouraging system suppliers to update their software for use in Wales, leading to a number of significant milestones being reached within two years of the fund opening. By October 2024, EPS was available to communities in every health board in Wales and by mid-February 2025, more than one million prescription items had been dispensed via EPS. By the end of May 2025, this figure had risen to nearly 2.5 million. At the time of writing, EPS is available at 66 GP practices and more than 370 community pharmacies in Wales, as well as being used by all dispensing appliance contractors (DACs).
Working with Life Sciences Hub Wales to deliver funding has shown how digital healthcare transformation can be achieved, setting a new standard for medicines management in Wales. The funding window for Tier 1 has closed but we look forward to continuing to work with Life Sciences Hub Wales on Tiers 2 and 3 throughout the 2025-26 financial year, moving towards a paperless journey in Wales and encouraging every supplier to develop push notifications through the NHS App alerting patients that their prescription is ready, which will improve patient experience. There is still a way to go on our digital journey, but as we move through Q1 of a new financial year, it’s a good point to pause and reflect on how much has been achieved together.
You can find out more about the Community Pharmacy System Innovation Fund here.
