Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to enable the use of electronic FP 10 MDA prescriptions during the covid-19 outbreak.

In 2018 NHS Digital undertook a prioritisation exercise to identify future enhancements and improvements to the electronic prescription service (EPS) through to March 2021. This included a review of the use of FP10 MDA prescriptions. This exercise identified several other higher priority developments to EPS that were required at that time.

More recently work to review gaps in the EPS as part of the NHS COVID-19 response has resulted in some work being initiated to accelerate technical developments that will be required to support both this and other immediate concerns. This work has commenced but does not currently include EPS support for FP10 MDA prescription use due to the technical changes required. This is a highly complex area and requires significant development both centrally and by system vendors.