Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of the benefits of (1) a centralised web-based system to support the sharing of local health and social care records, and (2) ensuring that community pharmacists are able to populate such records.

The NHS Long Term Plan and the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework envisage an increased role for community pharmacy and there is agreement across stakeholders that read and write access to patient records, where they are involved in the patient’s direct care, is necessary to support this.

NHSX is developing interoperable National Health Service IT systems, focussing on shared data standards and infrastructure across settings to allow clinicians including community pharmacists to safely and securely access patient records, make informed clinical decisions and populate records. NHSX will engage with stakeholders including pharmacy contractors, IT suppliers and the public to test any proposed digital solutions and consider issues such as patient consent and data security.