The Department of Health and Social Care has announced 16 NHS trusts across England will receive a share of £16 million to introduce electronic prescribing.
The funding is being introduced to help trusts replace paper-based systems, with an aim to support the entire NHS become digital for prescribing by 2024.
In September 2020, the third wave as part of a £78 million million programme, awarded £8.7 million to 7 NHS trusts. Previously 13 trust were announced to receive a share of £16 million in wave one, and £29.4 million was provided as part of wave two of the funding programme last year.
Dr Paul Curley, Deputy Medical Director and Chief Clinical Information Officer at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which received £1.6 million in 2018, said: “At The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust we successfully implemented eMeds, our ePMA system. eMeds has revolutionised prescribing and improved medicines safety across the trust, and a number of benefits have been realised including high staff satisfaction levels, greater visibility of prescriptions and reduced prescribing errors.”
“We deployed eMeds at significant pace across 3 hospital sites in 10 months, against a planned implementation period of 24 months. We believe that our ePMA project has been one of our most successful implementations ad was driven by the objective of clinical improvement. It was completed only months before the COVID-19 pandemic and so was hugely beneficial for our overall response.”
The 16 NHS trusts receiving the funding
| NHS trust | Funding |
|---|---|
| University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust | £1,213,000 |
| Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust | £970,000 |
| Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust | £1,423,000 |
| Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust | £1,485,000 |
| West London Mental Health NHS Trust | £1,308,000 |
| Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust | £1,485,000 |
| Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust | £96,000 |
| Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust | £1,485,000 |
| Somerset NHS Foundation Trust | £400,000 |
| University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust | £673,000 |
| Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Trust | £882,000 |
| Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust | £960,000 |
| Medway NHS Foundation Trust | £1,485,000 |
| Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust | £342,000 |
| Airedale NHS Foundation Trust | £534,000 |
| Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust | £1,188,000 |
