A System For Secure Electronic Prescription Handling

The National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom (UK) is currently going through a period of vast reform, with guidelines for that reform set out in the NHS plan [1]. As part of the plan a system for electronic prescribing of drugs should be available by 2004. The main objective of this transformation is to remove many of the frailties of the present paper based system, in terms of fraud, inefficiency and administrative workload. However, any proposed system must also uphold the tradition of patient choice with respect to dispensing pharmacy, and must be reliable, robust and of good performance if it is to have any hope of gaining acceptance from the health professionals involved. In this paper we set out our proposed electronic prescription processing system design, with the emphasis placed firmly on performance, scalability and security. In the early sections we aim to demonstrate just why an electronic prescribing system is required, by looking at the present system and its frailties. We also identify factors that are important in the development of any future system. Our proposed system is then detailed, along with its anticipated benefits and disadvantages.