Private e-scrips to launch

By: Karen Dearne

PHARMACIST Paul Naismith is taking a punt on launching a privately-owned electronic prescribing project, ahead of the release of a KPMG review on options being considered by the federal Government.

Mr Naismith, chief executive of pharmacy IT supplier Fred Health, said improving "basic safety" by reducing medication errors was too important to delay.

Fred Health and the newly established eRX Script Exchange are wholly owned subsidiaries of PCA Nu Systems, in turn controlled by parties associated with the Pharmacy Guild.

A Health Department spokeswoman said a range of approaches to e-prescribing were being explored, and the private proposal supported by the Pharmacy Guild "had been looked at". "The KPMG report is being considered as part of broader activities in progressing e-prescribing within Australia," she said.

Fred Health plans to deliver a nationwide e-prescribing transaction hub - eRX Script Exchange - by 2009, in partnership with NZ software developer Simpl and Microsoft Australia.

A similar initiative, ScriptX, foundered in July when the GP software maker Health Communication Network pulled out.

But Mr Naismith said pharmacists could not go on putting patients at risk when technology existed to prevent errors.

"We don't have problems reading doctors' handwriting now because scripts are mostly printed out, but there are still a lot of 'transcription errors', where instructions are misread or misunderstood," he said. "Part of the problem is that because scripts are printed, pharmacists don't spend the same time processing the information it contains."

Microsoft's managing director for Worldwide Health Neil Jordan, met federal health officials during his recent visit to Canberra.

Mr Jordan said Microsoft's Health Connection Engine (HCE) would underpin the eRX platform.

"This technology came out of a project by Simpl three years ago as a means of resolving inter-operability problems in health care," he said.

"We thought it a very elegant solution, and we bought the rights so we can make the HCE available to anyone, free of charge, under an open-source licence."

Mr Naismith said he chose the Simpl design after conducting a global examination of e-prescribing systems.

"Most are built around the US model, where the doctor has to send the prescription to the chosen pharmacy, so there's little consumer choice," he said.

Mr Naismith said there was no doubt they could build the system, but "the harder part is finding how private enterprise and government can work together in e-health".

There was considerable commercial risk that Medicare would try to build something itself, he said. And while Mr Naismith was happy to work with the revamped National E-Health Transition Authority: "I've got a tight timeframe, I'm paying the bills and I can't be waiting for ever."

Meanwhile, Microsoft is trawling local health IT developers for talent, hosting a second Austrade mission to its Redmond headquarters in November.

"This is about having an open dialogue between us and the Australian companies who develop and innovate on our platform," said Norbert Haehnel, Microsoft Australia's director of developer strategy.