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Society issues guidance on electronic health records

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Society issues guidance on electronic health records

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has published updated guidance on the use of electronic health records.

‘Electronic Health Records (EHR): Guidance for Community Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians’ informs pharmacy professionals on key principles concerning the maintenance and use of EHRs of all types, including pharmacy Patient Medication Records, GP systems or national NHS electronic record services. It describes some of the issues associated with using EHRs in pharmacy professional practice and makes recommendations to pharmacy professionals concerning best practice use of EHRs to support high quality practice and patient care.

As well as covering general principles about how EHRs should be kept, maintained and accessed, the guidance provides specific support to the national NHS electronic record services used in the devolved administrations, tailored to the initiatives in those countries. The new guidance, which covers England, Scotland and Wales, replaces the Society's previous EHR guide for the profession which was published in 2012.

Chair of the RPS-led Pharmacy Information Management and Technology group Sid Dajani said: “It is for a large part thanks to the RPS that all registered pharmacy professionals like myself, now have access to the Electronic Health Record in order to reduce medicine errors, improve medicines adherence and deliver safe and more effective care to our patients. This guidance is an important tool for all pharmacists accessing patient records. The RPS believes patient record access, ideally read and write access, is vitally important to enable the profession to continue to transform the way we practice to improve patient outcomes and efficiency."

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