In February 2005, TPP's work on the Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions (ETP) came to fruition when the company became the first GP supplier to be ETP-compliant, the first to deploy ETP to a GP practice and the first to send an ETP message successfully.
In May 2006, little over a year since the very first ETP transaction, TPP reached a milestone - one million ETP transactions issued on SystmOne. A TPP spokesperson says, "We've come a long way with ETP. We were incredibly proud to be the first supplier to send an ETP message. For that one message to multiply into one million messages is incredible. With more units becoming Spine-enabled, more of our users will be able to take advantage of ETP. We recorded 200,000 transactions in April, and that monthly figure is constantly increasing."
ETP (Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions) is an important element of the National Programme for IT, which is being implemented in stages by NHS Connecting for Health. By 2007, every GP surgery, community pharmacy and other dispensers will have access to the service. When it is fully implemented, paper prescriptions will become largely redundant. Patients will not need to make an extra trip to the surgery just to pick up a prescription as pharmacists will be able to access the prescription information directly from Spine. The first stage of ETP implementation sees prescriptions printed with a barcode. The pharmacist scans this barcode to retrieve prescription information from Spine. They no longer need to type data into their computer system, saving time and increasing safety and accuracy.
TPP is working closely with the NHS to help achieve the NHS Connecting for Health vision. The integration of ETP into SystmOne demonstrates that TPP is responding to requirements and delivering results.
