Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with relevant stakeholders on the implementation of an electronic prescribing service in secondary care.

We are engaging with all secondary care system suppliers regarding the implementation of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS). During the pandemic, secondary care was provided with tailored access to the existing EPS system used in primary care. This enabled its use for outpatient prescriptions for community pharmacy and homecare prescribing. Secondary care system suppliers will now undertake the necessary development to ensure EPS can be utilised. There has been increasing use of electronic prescribing and medicines administration systems to support prescribing and medicines administration and discharge prescribing for inpatients within secondary care.