No drugs on the Net

A major pharmaceutical distributor has revived a crusade to let GPs send prescriptions to chemists via the Internet.

Proposals were rejected last year by the NHS Executive (NHSE) on the grounds that patient confidentiality would be compromised. Pharmed, a non-profit organisation established by German pharmaceutical distributor Gehe, is repeating calls for email links between doctors and chemists, and says it has addressed NHSE's concerns.

Pharmed director Ian Moody said: 'The last proposal was rejected because it collected prescription data for marketing. Without a central database, we hope to avoid the issues raised last time.'

Pharmed claims to be in negotiation with the NHSE over its system, and to be working with an advisory panel, including representatives from the BMA and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

The Department of Health (DoH) was adamant that Pharmed faces a long battle. 'The DoH is against this idea. It's open to fraud, and would increase GPs' work - they'd have to write out a prescription and type it into the computer,' the spokesman said.

BMA spokesman Dr George Ray was barely more positive about the Pharmed proposals. 'There'll be a lot of politics over this. As a GP, one would only want to do this with proper guidelines issued from the NHS and professional associations.'

Pharmed insisted that the NHSE has issued guidelines covering email prescriptions. 'The savings will be in repeat prescriptions, which are 70% of prescriptions,' Moody said.

Earlier this month the NHSE advised GPs and pharmacists not to provide prescription data to market research companies.

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