The Northern Ireland government has invested £100 million in funding to its ePharmacy programme and to support earlier intervention for children and families. The total includes £42 million for ePharmacy and £29.2 million for Together for Families from the Public Service Transformation Bid, and an additional £30 million for Together for Families from the National Lottery Community Fund.
The ePharmacy primary care digital reform programme is to support prescriptions to be digitally transferred to community pharmacies, with the Department of Health sharing hopes this will streamline the process for patients. A new digital platform is planned to support the delivery of clinical services through community pharmacies, with an aim to enhance access to care and bring treatment closer to people’s homes.
Health minister Mike Nesbitt pointed to the programme’s potential to “genuinely transform” the patient experience in Northern Ireland, adding: “This project and the new digital platform will help to make Health and Social Care as safe as possible, accelerate primary care reform and help support our move towards a neighbourhood model of care for primary, community and social care.”
Funding for Together for Families aims to support the nation’s new “transformational” model shifting toward earlier intervention. The health minister refers to the initiative as “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the life chances of children and families”.
£61 million of Public Sector Transformation Funding was received in the first tranche by primary care MDTs, the Department of Health shares, reportedly enabling more than 1.1 million patients across Northern Ireland to access “a wider range of support” from GP practices.
Wider trend: Digital medicines
University Hospitals of Liverpool Group has shared “significant progress” around digital medicines infrastructure at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, highlighting a large-scale EPMA upgrade, the rollout of EPMA in emergency departments, the deployment of automated drug cabinets, and the implementation of the Philips ICCA EPR in critical care. The digital medicines team’s portfolio includes the EPMA and its web portal, the Careflow pharmacy stock control system, and medicines automation. A visit from the NHS England digital medicines team earlier in 2025 reportedly offered positive feedback, specifically on local data-driven initiatives and the Time Critical Medicines Dashboard.
Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board has celebrated the go-live of electronic prescribing and medicines administration at Wrexham Maelor Hospital, and become the first Welsh health board to achieve ePMA integration with the shared medicines record. The transition to an ePMA provided by Better follows a successful early adopter trial with the Heddfan Unit in December, the board shares. G0-live took place over three days, with clinical teams working to manually transcribe 600 inpatients onto the system prior to introducing ePMA as part of routine care.
NHS England has published a new funding opportunity building on the digital medicines first of type schemes, focusing on scalable technical capability across EPR and ePMA workflows, and GP Connect. The revenue stream is focused across two themes, in medicines on admission, looking for EPR and ePMA capability to “consume fully structured GP medicines” via GP Connect. It also seeks similar capabilities in closed loop medicines management, to include end-to-end and standards-based interoperability for closed loop medicines workflows in EPR and ePMA, as well as automated dispensing cabinets, and pharmacy stock control systems.
