Public hospitals in Australia will soon issue electronic prescriptions, beginning with a trial at Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia.

The service, which is a joint project between Royal Perth, WA Health Support Services and the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), will go live at all specialties of the hospital after a 12-week trial in select outpatient clinics, namely Haematology, Immunology, Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine, and Gastroenterology and Liver clinics.

During the trial, registered prescribers can provide patients with an e-prescription, which comes in a token form via SMS or email, and can be presented either in person or forwarded electronically to their local pharmacy for dispensing.

ADHA CEO Amanda Cattermole said the trial will inform future plans to introduce the service across WA Health.

WHY IT MATTERS

The project marks the first escript issuance in a public metropolitan hospital setting nationwide, according to ADHA.

Ros Jones, project lead from Royal Perth, said the ability to provide patients with digital prescriptions "enables us to be far more responsive". "Patients receive their script in real-time, straight away, no more waiting for them to be posted out," he added.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

The Australian Health Department first introduced e-prescriptions in May 2020 as an alternative to paper prescriptions. As of August this year, more than 45,000 prescribers have issued nearly 72 million digital scripts with around 98% of all community pharmacies in the country dispensing them.

The department has been shouldering the cost of electronic prescribing as SMS costs are incurred each time a prescriber sends a token to a patient's mobile phone. Its provision of subsidies, which was supposed to end on 30 June, was extended until the end of September.

Meanwhile, the ADHA notes that there have been 390,000 registrations for an Active Script List, a consolidated list of all medicines that a patient can receive from their local pharmacy. The registry allows patients to manage their active e-prescriptions and repeats without having to present a token.

Recently, the Health Department sought applications from technology companies to provide a prescription delivery service and an Active Script List register for an initial four-year term. These platforms are currently being offered by Fred IT's eRx and MediSecure.