Medical Specialists, the One Stop Online Pharmacy with Doctors, from Greater Manchester, is to provide NHS services from the start of April. They are already listed on the NHS Choices website as an internet pharmacy. “This is a major achievement for us and the NHS, as patients will be able to post us their prescriptions, or their own GP will be able to send them to us digitally/electronically as we now have the Electronic Prescription Service facility available. Our pharmacy team will receive them immediately from the patient’s GP and will be able to dispense them quickly, and can post them out to their home, their place of work or even abroad if they are on holiday. Patients can go to our web site (www.medical-specialists.co.uk) to register for this service” said David Bailey, Managing Director. The Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) will enable electronic prescriptions to be generated, transmitted, received and dispensed by pharmacists who have the system installed. These electronic prescriptions will eventually replace paper ones in most cases. Around 1.5 million prescriptions are issued every working day in England, and this figure is expected to rise by 5% each year. As a result, the paper-based system needs to be replaced with an electronic one which is more efficient, consistently accurate and able to cope with expected further increases in the number of prescriptions. In particular, about 70% of prescriptions are now repeat prescriptions and the new service has been designed to make it quicker and easier to dispense them. Over time, the EPS will bring a range of benefits to patients, GPs and other staff. For example, patients will no longer have to visit their GP surgery just to collect a prescription. This will save time for both patients and GP surgery staff. Also, accuracy will be improved because prescription information will not need to be typed in by both the GP and again by the pharmacist. Prescriptions will be complete with full details of the medicines being prescribed. “Many patients are not able to collect their prescriptions from their GP or take the prescription to a pharmacy. Others are unable to get their medication delivered to their home as they are at work and their local pharmacist is unable to deliver to their place of work. Some patients have either embarrassing conditions or do not want their local pharmacy to know about the medication they are being prescribed, either way Medical Specialists Pharmacy is able to help all these patients with their professional and confidential NHS service. This, in my opinion, is the future of prescribing and dispensing, and we are in at the beginning. We have vast experience in this field as have been established since 1994, and have had a website since 2001” said David.