The Government of Ireland has shared its Community Pharmacy Agreement 2025, outlining digital priorities across pharmacy IT integration, e-prescribing, data sharing, and vendor engagement, with a view to ensuring “community pharmacists are better equipped to contribute to national health priorities”.
Pharmacy IT systems should be ready to integrate with core national digital assets such as the national shared care record and e-prescribing service, the government notes, as “the success depends on pharmacy’s ability to connect securely, share data in structured and coded formats, and do so in real time”.
It states its Health Information Act will establish a legal framework to make pharmacy data part of a patient’s longitudinal health record. In recognition of the role of pharmacies in this regard, and to support them in the development of the required systems and infrastructure, the government is introducing an “eHealth integration allowance” – a one-off grant of €1,825.
The government also outlines the outlook for pharmacy in the reform of prescription management, with the Health Service Executive’s (HSE’s) national ePrescription service (NePS) to be implemented in pharmacies by 2028. “Acknowledging the progress towards digitalisation and ePrescribing, collaboration has commenced between the Department of Health and the IPU to identify practical mechanisms to reduce administrative burden associated with printing or paper-based prescription records,” it shares. Work will begin to explore the technical and legislative changes required to make this transition, with a long-term goal of adopting a digital-first approach and creating the conditions for a fully electronic prescribing environment. With a timeline of 2026, community pharmacy should upgrade IT systems, adapt workflows, and train teams to support the move to digital.
To allow for integration and interoperability with clinical systems, electronic prescriptions should include agreed minimum datasets with patient identifiers, healthcare professional identifiers, clinical details, standardised medication codes, and dispensing instructions. The NePS will then manage the entire lifecycle of those prescriptions and provide functionality such as the ability to review patients’ medication list, to support care delivery and patient safety. The service is set to be introduced in phases, with the government highlighting that during the transition period, pharmacies will need to operate dual processes, with both paper and electronic prescriptions.
HSE will work with vendors to support the delivery of system updates to enable NePS functionality, interoperability, and security, developing minimum datasets with national standardisation and coding requirements, and offer conformance testing prior to rollout. Building, configuring, integrating and testing is scheduled for 2027, with initial sites to go live in Q4 2027, and widespread implementation across GPs and community pharmacies throughout 2028.
The integration of individual health identifiers (IHIs) “will play a central role in ensuring patient identity integrity as Ireland transitions towards a fully digital prescription and dispensing process”, according to the government. It will include the development of a direct interface between pharmacy systems and the HSE’s IHI database to allow real-time verification, and ensure records are linked to the correct patient.
Also outlined are the government’s plans to work with vendors to ensure identifier capture is implemented in a secure way consistent with pharmacy workflows. Community pharmacists will be “key participants” in the national shared care record, set to be deployed in phases beginning in Q4 2025, gaining the ability to read records and contribute relevant data, which will be reflected within patient records in the HSE Health App. HSE will also work with pharmacy system vendors to manage integration with the national electronic health record programme, and work is to be done on shaping the design of pharmacy cyber security requirements.
Looking ahead, the government highlights that exploring the opportunities for AI “could lead to even greater advancements in personalised medicine and predictive analytics, enhancing the overall effectiveness of pharmacy services”. AI could also have a role in assisting with medicines reconciliation, adherence prediction, and operational planning, it shares. Mobile health apps and patient portals can help empower patients to manage medications, and digital therapeutics and clinical decision support tools can help expand the role of pharmacy in chronic disease prevention and management. “Integration with pharmacy systems and alignment with shared care records will be critical to enable these tools safely and effectively,” it states.
The government commits to undertaking early engagement with vendors, involving them from the start in digital planning, and publishing a roadmap for upcoming pharmacy digital projects. “The engagement model will remain open and non-proprietary,” it continues, with no single solution being mandated. “Instead, national specifications will support a standards-based approach that enables interoperability and reduces fragmentation.”
Wider trend: Digital transformation in Ireland
The HSE Health App has been launched in Ireland, offering patients a “digital front door” to health services. The public launch has been welcomed by the Minister for Health as “an exciting milestone” in the journey to digitise patient health records and to “make it easier for everyone to navigate the health service”. The announcement shares that the app development team consulted with a number of patient advisory groups to ensure differing needs are met in the design process, as well the app has also reportedly been tested with users who rely on assistive technology.
UPMC Ireland has selected MEDITECH Expanse as the electronic health record to be used across multiple sites, in line with their latest digital transformation efforts aimed at improving patient care. According to UPMC Ireland, the addition of Expanse will allow them to “streamline operations and support future innovation” in four hospitals, two cancer centres and six sports medicine clinics by giving them access to a comprehensive suite of clinical, administrative and financial solutions. This will reportedly “enable faster, safer, and more connected care” while also making it easier to share information between the different locations, which they note is a “fundamental step toward achieving future growth”.
The HSE published a national policy defining data field standards, said to provide best practice guidelines for patient facing staff on accurate patient registration and data recording, supporting the successful matching of each patient to their unique Individual Health Identifier (IHI). The specifications will apply to all new system procurements, and support existing training and education around standardisation, accuracy, and completeness of patient data, the service notes.
