Digital Medicines: A year in review and what's next for the Programmes

2025 marked another major step forward for the Digital Medicines Programmes of which I feel privileged to be part of, working with an exceptional and talented team. I’m excited to continue this momentum to deliver our plans for the next 12 months. 

The Digital Medicines Programmes brings together two main areas to achieve its vision:

Making the prescribing, dispensing and administration of medicines everywhere in Wales easier, safer, more efficient and effective for patients and professionals through digital.

These areas are the Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Programme and the Secondary Care electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (ePMA) Programme. The ePMA programme also includes the Shared Medicines Record (SMR) Project which aims to deliver a consolidated medicines, allergies and intolerances record for every patient in Wales.

Primary Care Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) Programme

The Primary Care EPS Programme enables prescriptions from GP practices to be signed and sent digitally to a patient’s nominated community pharmacy or dispenser using EPS. 

Time savings, reduction of paperwork and the overall convenience are just some of the benefits we are regularly hearing from healthcare professionals.

Practice pharmacist, Gethin Morgan, at Roath House Surgery in Cardiff said: “There is far less paperwork with EPS. A big benefit is that prescriptions are easier to track and, if we need to amend anything or if a patient lives further away, we can just talk to them on the phone and resolve issues without them needing to come to the surgery.   

“For us, requesting nominations via EPS is also a benefit. We have a lot of historic nominations, with our student population moving between home and university, and EPS makes this easier to manage.”

Working with NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership, we published an EPS dashboard giving insights into the latest figures. 

Since going live, 181 (49%) of GPs, 648 (95%) community pharmacies and all Dispensing Appliance Contractors (DACs) are using EPS, benefiting 718k patients. 19.8 million prescription items have also been claimed through EPS. Correct as of 16 April 2026. 

Compared with March 2025, these figures represent significant year-on-year growth. In summary: 

• Sending prescriptions digitally from GP practices to a patient’s nominated community pharmacy/dispenser through EPS (EPS) has increased by 300% 
• Community pharmacies enabled to receive a prescription digitally through EPS has grown by 128% 
• Prescription items dispensed via EPS have risen by 1,292% 
• Patients who have had a prescription sent digitally by EPS has grown by 519% 

We have also delivered a series of “Maximising EPS webinars” and support sessions for community pharmacies to strengthen awareness and understanding of the full capabilities of EPS, all of which have been well received.

EPS plans for the year ahead  

The next 12 months promises to be an exciting period for the Primary Care EPS Programme as we work towards enabling all GP practices in Wales to send prescriptions digitally through EPS to a patient’s nominated community pharmacy by 30th November 2026. 

There will be the deployment of geographical and postcode-based searching of EPS enabled pharmacies, one-off pharmacy nominations and the new non-nomination software developments to the GP-EPS enabled system in Wales. The non-nomination development means GP practices will be able to send prescriptions to the NHS Spine for patients without a nominated pharmacy, allowing them to attend any EPS enabled pharmacy and request their prescription to be retrieved for dispensing. 

We will be exploring the opportunity to introduce bulk signing of EPS prescriptions within the GP-EPS enabled system to introduce further efficiencies in the prescribing process. For Dispensing Doctor practices, those who both prescribe and dispense medicines for patients, there will be the testing of EPS with a Dispensing Doctor practice system supplier. 

We will be completing an early adopter, in partnership with the national Six Goals Programme, to use EPS in hospital GP Out of Hours and Urgent Primary Care Centres to send prescriptions digitally to pharmacies. 

In collaboration with partner organisations and the national Secondary Care ePMA programme, we will also explore the potential for using EPS in hospital outpatient departments to send prescriptions digitally to a patients nominated community pharmacy for dispensing.

Secondary Care electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (ePMA) Programme 

Over the past year, there has been significant progress made with the national Secondary Care ePMA Programme, removing the need to use paper to prescribe and record the administration of medicines in hospitals in Wales. This programme also includes the Shared Medicines Record (SMR) Project which aims to deliver a consolidated medicines, allergies and intolerances record for every patient in Wales all in one place. 

All health boards and Velindre Cancer Centre (VCC) have signed contracts with their ePMA supplier and three health boards are live with the ePMA system. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (CAV UHB) went live in July 2025 and Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BC UHB) commenced their go live in December 2025, completing their inpatient, acute settings, emergency department and community hospital implementation in March 2026. 

BC UHB were also the first health board to integrate their ePMA with the SMR to write discharge medicines into the SMR to start creating a consolidated medicines record.  The next phase of technical readiness is progressing BC UHB’s ePMA to read medicines from the SMR, including GP medicines, allergies and intolerances to support more efficient and safer medicines reconciliation on hospital admission, which will remove the need to transcribe information from one system to another. 

Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (CTM UHB) commenced their ePMA early adopter at the Princess of Wales Hospital in March 2026 and are the first health board to integrate their ePMA with national diagnostic test results to support prescribing. 

Readiness working is progressing with Aneurin Bevan University Health Board (AB UHB), Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB), Hywel Dda University Health Board (HDDA UHB) and Velindre Cancer Centre (VCC) to commence their early adopters this calendar year, integrating their ePMA systems with the national architecture including the SMR. 

We continue to have our national Technical and Clinical Assurance Group (TCAG) and our ePMA Communities of Knowledge and Action Group (CoKA) which provides a valuable forum to share best practices. These help reduce unwarranted variation in ePMA system configuration, identify the minimum go live requirements, business continuity planning, strengthening SMR readiness and learning from partner and other NHS organisations to ensure we adopt best practices and learn from their lessons. 

To enable ePMA go lives, several core national integrations have also been delivered: 

• Welsh Patient Administration System (WPAS) Admission, Discharge and Transfer (ADT) messages – inpatient lists presented in the ePMA systems 
• Welsh Results Reporting Service (WRRS) Diagnostic Test Results feed – agreed test results presented in ePMA systems to support prescribing 
• Welsh Clinical Portal (WCP) Stapling – this enables ePMAs to be launched directly within a WCP patient record, removing the need to log into separate and disparate systems to provide care 
• Hospital Discharge Advice Letters (DALs) – sending DALs digitally to the national care record document repository and to GPs via the Welsh Clinical Communications Gateway (WCCG) 
• SMR Application Programming interface (API) – delivering an API to read and write medicines and allergies with the SMR, including GP medicines, allergies and intolerances, and populating the WCP DAL with medicines at the point of hospital discharge 
• User authentication (identity management) – NADEX and Entra ID integration 
• Infrastructure connectivity – secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections between ePMA systems and NHS Wales network 

Plans for the year ahead with ePMA 

This year is going to be another busy yet rewarding one as we continue to build upon the momentum and successes of 2025, working collaboratively across organisations and professional groups to deliver the digital transformation to services. 

There will be the continuation of roll outs across CAV UHB and CTM UHB, including full integration with the SMR to allow medicines, allergies and intolerance information recorded in these systems to be shared across health board organisational boundaries and to follow the patient wherever care is provided. Implementations for the ePMA system will also commence at AB UHB, Powys THB, HDDA UHB and VCC including full integration with the SMR. 

We will be supporting BC UHB to complete the next phase of their SMR integration to read medicines, allergies and intolerances from the SMR to support the medicines reconciliation process at the point of hospital admission, removing the need to transcribe medicines information from one system to another. 

As mentioned, we are exploring opportunities to deploy EPS in collaboration with ePMA suppliers for hospital outpatient prescriptions. Our national TCAG and CoKA groups will also continue to share best practices, supporting national alignment and we will be reporting on the benefits realised from ePMA deployments. 

It has been exciting to see such strong national collaboration and commitment across teams, organisations and professional groups. The progress made to date simply wouldn’t have been possible without this collective effort. I’m confident that this momentum will continue and carry us forward throughout 2026.