Press room: Mon, 3 Sep 2007
Cegedim Rx ensures NHS compliance is a breeze for pharmacists with Quicksilva
Quicksilva's Spinal Tap will decrease time and resources spent on EPS compliance
Quicksilva Software Solutions, an independent UK-based provider of software and services to the public sector, today announced that Cegedim Rx Ltd has installed Spinal Tap to alleviate the burden on its clients of implementing the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) element of the NHS Connecting for Health (CfH) Programme. Spinal Tap will be hosted centrally and will manage all upgrades, reducing the amount of time and resources pharmacies spend ensuring each branch is EPS compliant.
EPS allows prescriptions (including repeat dispensing) generated by GPs and other prescribers to be transferred electronically between prescribers, dispensers and the reimbursement agency. Pharmacies are currently gearing up for the second phase of EPS, which will allow patients to nominate which pharmacy they want to use to pick up their prescription or have it delivered by. In order to be nominated, pharmacies need secure access and integration with the NHS Data Spine, the national CfH database, where prescriptions will be sent by prescribers and stored before they are downloaded by pharmacists.
Cegedim Rx, a provider of quality IT solutions to the pharmacy market, works with over 50 per cent of UK pharmacies. Spinal Tap, Quicksilva's integration tool, will enable all their customers to quickly and securely plug their existing systems into the Spine.
Julie Wright, IT Manager at Manor Pharmacy Group explained: "Electronic prescriptions are a major opportunity for our business, but it also has the potential to be a complete headache. Cegedim Rx work with the best companies to ensure that, for us, Spine compliance is made as seamless and straightforward as possible. We don't have to worry about upgrades or new phases of the CfH programme as this is all managed centrally on our behalf, freeing up our resource to concentrate on other areas of our business.”
Cegedim Rx will host Spinal Tap in a secure environment, where it will act as a central message broker to the Spine. Spinal Tap enables any form of communication (LDAP, SOAP, ebXML) from pharmacy IT systems to interact with the NHS Spine by acting as an intelligent hub to interpret the HL7 message format that carries patient data into the Spine. Spinal Tap can also be used for systems integration in non-health markets by swapping out the HL7 standard messages for those of the appropriate sector.
Pharmacists will be able to take advantage of a hassle-free solution to CfH compliance over Cegedim's existing N3 network connection. As new EPS parameters are put in place any updates can be made centrally and then filtered down to individual pharmacies. For large pharmaceutical companies this spells an end to having to configure each branch's IT system on a one-by-one basis and for independents without IT departments, this saves pharmacy staff from having to understand and implement often complex updates. In short Spinal Tap will make the change from paper based to digital prescriptions seamless for both pharmacies and consumers.
Mike Collier, Technical Director, Cegedim Rx stated: “The delivery of healthcare has changed enormously over the past couple of years and it will continue to do so. Compliance with the NHS Connecting for Health programme isn't optional and for pharmacists the potential commercial benefits are significant – but these can easily be eroded if they can't rely on a robust IT backbone. Spinal Tap completes our IT offering and ensures all our customers can integrate with the Spine in order to participate fully in the delivery of modern healthcare across the UK.”
Launched in May 2006, Spinal Tap has undergone compliance testing to enable IT systems used within pharmacies to achieve compliance with the first release of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) and test their systems for EPS 2 due for release later this year.
Last year Boots announced that it would use Quicksilva's Spinal Tap integration software as part of its EPS solution.
