The implementation of an electronic prescriptions service should be made a high priority in Australia’s electronic health strategy, according to a new report.
Conducted by Deloitte for the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council (AHMAC), the report said a national approach was needed to put in place an electronic prescriptions transfer service between health care providers and pharmacies.
"Establishment of a nationally-integrated service will allow consumers the freedom to fulfil medication scripts at a pharmacy of their choice, regardless of location," the report, titled National E-Health Strategy, said.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia and Fred Health are currently developing an electronic prescription system called eRx Script Exchange and Fred Health chief executive Paul Naismith welcomed the report's recommendation.
"It's clearly in line with the script exchange project we are building at the moment and will deliver what they want, which is a secure nationally-scripted exchange," Mr Naismith said.
"They're advocating a three-year timeframe for that project. We are planning to deliver it next year... They see that we have capabilities as a profession because we are pretty well computerised and we've had success with things like PBS Online… They are looking for common sense approaches and what we're offering fits their approach."
The report found that the state of Australia's health information was "characterised by many thousands of discrete islands of information" and relied too much on "pen, paper and human memory", which led to significant inefficiencies and medical errors.
It warned, however, against a policy of centrally managing the development of separate electronic initiatives.
Instead, the report called for a strategy of national coordination, as well as a framework of financial investments and incentives to persuade health care providers to implement and adopt electronic systems.
"What this report does identify is that a centralised bureaucratic solution is likely not to be successful and I think that's a very important distinction," Mr Naismith said.
"In the UK they went for very much a centralised bureaucratic one-solution-fits-all approach which hasn't been overly successful to date and if it has been successful it has been extremely expensive. Whereas this essentially recognised that there are market-driven competitive solutions that can work as long as they provide the guidance around what we want… There is no technical barrier to systems talking together. The technology is there. The banking system shows that different automatic tellers from different countries and different banks can all work together. What's been lacking in the past is a business model."
The report also called for the implementation of internet-based portals for health care professionals with access to standardised and validated health sources, as well the development of an Individual Electronic Health Record (IEHR) for every Australian.
Mr Naismith said the introduction and successful implementation of eRx Script Exchange would position the pharmacy sector in a central role to provide information for IEHR.
"As a professional, as someone who wants pharmacy to be up front and driving this, it's really important that we make sure that pharmacists are in the middle of this and not just a side part," he said.