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Pharmacy bodies have welcomed yesterday's announcement that community pharmacies in England will be given read-only access to the summary care record from the Autumn, but have called for full read and write access in due course.

A joint statement from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Pharmacy Voice and PSNC said: "We strongly believe by extending summary care record access to community pharmacists people will receive better, safer and more accessible care. We believe greater pharmacy access to patient health information, including the ability to add useful information to electronic health records where patients give their consent to this, will further enhance patient and we will continue to push for this development."

Chief executive of Pharmacy Voice Rob Darracott said: "This is a positive first step to what we hope will be full read/write access to patient records, enabling pharmacy teams to provide better patient care and help provide a more consistent primary care service to patients." Full roll-out of read-only access is expected to take around 18 months.

Agreeing that pharmacists teams should have 'write' access at a later date, Numark's director of pharmacy services Mimi Lau said: "When this happens, pharmacists will be able to view and update medical records, making sure that the GP knows the outcome of each and every consultation. This will truly be primary integrated care working at its best to benefit patients and the NHS."

Giving patients the choice to allow pharmacy professionals to access their records could help them to receive better care, said Duncan Rudkin, chief executive of the General Pharmaceutical Council. But he warned that, with this greater power comes greater responsibility. "We can assure patients that pharmacy professionals and community pharmacies have to meet our standards when accessing patient records. These standards make clear the responsibilities of pharmacy professionals and pharmacy owners, including in relation to holding patients' information securely, obtaining patients' consent before accessing their information and respecting their privacy."

An example of the type of safer care delivered during the pilot study came from Woodhouse Pharmacy in Sheffield. A patient contacted the pharmacy outside of their GP's opening hours to ask the pharmacist about an antibiotic prescription. By accessing the SCR, the pharmacist could see the patient had a penicillin allergy and advised them not to take the amoxicillin that had been prescribed.