The nine projects at the heart of NHS IT

The Electronic Prescription Service

By 2007, every GP surgery and pharmacy will have access to the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS), allowing GPs to generate electronic prescriptions that will replace paper orders.

Around 1.3 million prescriptions are issued every day in England - a figure growing five per cent every year. Around 70 per cent are repeat prescriptions.

The new system will streamline the existing arrangements and improve accuracy and safety because prescription information will only be typed in once.

EPS will also be integrated with the NHS Care Records Service, recording what has been prescribed and actually dispensed to patients.

Patients with regular prescriptions will be able to nominate a pharmacy to receive the prescription electronically and prepare the patient's medicine in advance.

The project will involve "an enormous logistical challenge", the NHS said, because it will involve upgrading prescribing and dispensing systems, and issuing smart cards.

What progress so far?

The service will be introduced gradually, the first phase of implementation started in February 2005 and the service will be fully operational across England by the end of 2007.

The project is being rolled out in stages - first adding barcodes to paper prescriptions, then adding electronic signatures which can be used to authorise electronic prescriptions.

According to the NHS Connecting for Health business plan, the aim was to have 50 per cent of the National Prescription Service is in place by the end of 2005.

But Connecting for Health told silicon.com: "The target was always going to be a challenging one to meet, especially given its reliance on system supplier and PCT deployment activity."

It said suppliers have worked hard to develop their systems towards compliance with the requirements of the EPS.

"Deployment of release one of the service is now underway and we anticipate that suppliers will make significant progress in deploying their compliant systems in the coming months. We are confident that the over-arching target of 100 per cent of the NPS being delivered by the end of 2007 is achievable."

There are currently 140 GP practices operating the service and approximately 400 further GP practices have had their software upgraded in preparation for going live. As of 16 January, more than 250,000 prescriptions have been processed electronically.