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Northern Ireland’s Department of Health has announced a £42m investment in pharmacy services to move away from paper prescriptions and launch a digital platform for clinical services.

The DH said paper prescriptions “will be a thing of the past” as it launched the ePharmacy Primary Care Digital Reform Programme, with scripts to be digitally transferred from prescribers to community pharmacies.

Of the upcoming services platform, the Department said it aims to “manage the delivery of clinical services to the public through community pharmacies, improving patient safety, expanding access to care for patients and bringing treatment closer to people’s homes”.

Health minister Mike Nesbitt said: “With over 45 million items prescribed and dispensed annually across primary care in Northern Ireland, transitioning from paper prescriptions to a digital system will genuinely transform patient experience.

“This project and the new digital platform will help to make health and social care as safe as possible, accelerate primary care reform and help support our move towards a neighbourhood model of care for primary, community and social care.”

Chief pharmacist Cathy Harrison welcomed the news, describing electronic prescription transfer and the creation of a digital platform for pharmacy services as “vital enablers of reform” that will “support neighbourhood health and wellbeing with benefits for patients, community pharmacies [and] general practices”.