Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will develop a national action plan to (a) provide all NHS hospitals with automated dispensing cabinets integrated with ePMA to improve patient safety and eradicate errors in medicine prescription and administration and (b) deliver on all other aspects of his Department's technology vision.

Funding has been identified (£68 million) to support the acceleration of the introduction of ePrescribing and Medicine Administration (ePMA) systems for which there is evidence to support benefit. Individual trusts are making their own determinations of requirements for technology such as automated cabinets and are introducing as required locally. Work to integrate such systems with ePMA has started and will be reinforced with the advent of medication messaging standards as these are developed.

The Government has created NHSX, a joint unit between the Department, NHS England and NHS Improvement, to deliver the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care's Technology Vision and build on the Long Term Plan for the NHS. NHSX will combine all the levers of policy, implementation and change to allow a single-minded focus on giving the National Health Service the technology that patients and clinicians need.