Birmingham and Solihull NHS Trust chooses Ascribe pharmacy system

13 January 2015

 Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust has chosen an e-pharmacy system from Ascribe after winning £500k from an NHS England fund to improve patient safety.

Ascribe, part of EMIS Group, will provide its Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (ePMA) system to the Trust. It follows an award to the Trust of £500K from NHS England's ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards’ initiative.

Nigel Barnes, Director of Pharmacy, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust said, “The introduction of ePMA will improve the accuracy and consistency of prescribing, improve the administration of medicines as well as general medicines management throughout the Trust, ultimately improving the quality of service we provide to patients through increasing patient safety and clinical effectiveness”.

James Reed, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist and Chief Clinical Information Officer, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust commented: “This project will deliver clear benefits for patients in terms of safety and quality of practice. It will help all of our clinical staff to deliver the best care possible through reducing opportunities for errors and allowing easy access to information which until now has been tied up in paper records. This development forms an important step on our journey towards a paperless health record.”