Systems Solution get EPS clinical authority certificate

Irish pharmacy specialists Systems Solutions have passed Connecting for Health’s Release 1 compliance for its electronic prescriptions service (EPS) product QicScript.

QicScript is an EPS system which provides the management control for a pharmacy business. It has advanced features designed to manage today’s most important pharmacy issues, and enables pharmacists to reduce their costs and add more value to the services provided.

The system has now been formally awarded the clinical authority to rollout certificate from Connecting for Health, having received ‘technical authority to deploy’ in September 2005.

With Release 1 compliance, Systems Solutions can now deploy QicScript software into any English pharmacy and offer electronic transmission of prescription data between prescriber and dispenser, barcode printed on paper and release/return of prescription messages .

Pharmacists will be able to retrieve and dispense prescriptions which have been transmitted electronically from GP surgeries to the Spine.

System Solutions’ CEO, Howard Beggs, said: “Now with EPS accreditation, QicScript customers will be able to save valuable pharmacist time by eliminating the duplicative effort involved in keying-in prescription information and the days of attempting to read illegibly written prescriptions are well and truly gone.

“Essentially we operate on the premise that anything that can be automated should and will be automated. This achieves two things. Firstly, it frees up pharmacy time. In fact, together with QicScript’s recently introduced scanning-at-the-point-of dispensing technology, our newly EPS-accredited QicScript product can now allow pharmacists to dispense within two simple keystrokes.”

Systems Solutions has also recently introduced an SMS text/email messaging module, enabling pharmacists to remind patients to take or collect their medication and/or drop in to have their Medicines Use Review (MUR); a patient diagnostics module, allowing pharmacists to enhance their service offering through the provision of a complete health check recording functionality; and video conferencing capability, enabling patients with communication difficulties to be connected via video link to pharmacists with the skills and knowledge to communicate effectively with them.

Beggs said: “Patient safety remains at the very core of our organisation. By creating more time for the pharmacist to converse with and counsel patients on their medication-taking regimes, patients’ compliance with their medication and treatment should increase, whilst automation achieved through the electronic prescription service, linking GPs and pharmacists together, should automatically reduce the potential of medication errors occurring.”

Systems Solutions is now aiming to market the product to as many English pharmacies as possible. They already work closely with Boots the chemists.

A spokesperson told EHIPC that they hope to gain EPS 2 accreditation by the end of the year.

The Release 1 clinical authority follows the company’s recent acquisition of Medicom Medical Computer Solutions last month.