Electronic prescribing provides an option for prescribers and their patients to have a digital prescription as an alternative to a paper prescription. Electronic prescribing is not mandatory, and patients and prescribers will be able to choose an electronic or a paper version of their prescription.
Through the 2018/19 Commonwealth Budget, the Government announced support for the implementation of electronic prescribing. The Commonwealth Department of Health (Health) is leading the work to enable electronic prescribing and has overall accountability for the electronic prescribing project. Health has partnered with the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) to develop the technical components of the project, including the solution architecture and a conformance framework supporting the legal prescribing and dispensing of medicines and subsequent Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) claiming from electronic prescriptions.
Start with the Electronic Prescribing Conformance Process below - this includes mandatory registration requirements and reading.
If you are connecting your software to the My Health Record system then you may wish to follow our combined developer guides here:
https://developer.digitalhealth.gov.au/developer-guide/my-health-record-b2b-developer-guides
The Agency is very keen to understand and get feedback from the medical software industry on some key topics within the Guidelines.
eHealth Prescription and Dispense View documents represent an electronic summary of information about medication prescriptions and dispensations contained in an individual’s My Health Record.
eHealth prescription record documents can be used to share information about prescribed medications via the individual’s digital health record. Documents of this type do not represent actual prescriptions, but merely support the sharing of information about medication prescriptions via the individual’s digital health record.
This package contains the conformance test specifications for Prescribing systems, Dispensing Systems, Open Prescription Delivery Services (PDS), Mobile Intermediary Systems, Mobile Channel, Active Script List Registry Systems, and all associated test data.
The Australian Digital Health Agency provides the following documents relating to Electronic Prescribing.
Each software developer needs to consider the jurisdictions they think their software will operate in and consider the legal obligations for those jurisdictions. Software developers are responsible for contacting their relevant state and territory regulation authorities to attain this information. This document has been developed and is maintained by the Department of Health.
These technical framework documents are provided to software vendors and demonstrate what is required to enable electronic prescribing.
The following Electronic Prescribing Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are categorised into the following topics: General, Dispensing and Technical Questions along with a Glossary and links to more information.
Electronic Transfer of Prescription (ETP) involves the creation of an electronic message (alongside a legal paper prescription) which is transmitted to a prescription exchange service (PES).
Archive - for the latest on Electronic Prescribing refer to:
https://developer.digitalhealth.gov.au/electronic-prescribing
Further information about the Electronic Prescribing Industry Offer
The Electronic Prescribing Industry Offer- second round is now closed and all tenderers have been notified of the outcome.
The Agency’s Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP) Release 1.1 has been archived on this website, but is still available for download.
Electronic Prescribing – Frequently Asked Questions:
On behalf of the Department of Health and Aged Care, the Australian Digital Health Agency advises that the reimbursements of electronic prescription tokens sent via SMS will be extended until 31 March 2023.
In response to feedback received and in recognition of the current state of development progress, the Agency has extended the sunset dates.
NOTE DATE CHANGE: The upgrade will now take place on Saturday 25 June 2022.
Verizon Australia is a third party organisation who manages the issuance of both Medicare and NASH PKI certificates that are used by Healthcare Organisations to undertake electronic business with Services Australia.
Changes to the National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) PKI certificates - The Australian Digital Health Agency has been working closely with Services Australia and the medical software industry to upgrade the NASH authentication system to enhance security when accessing digital health services.
The Agency has published the specifications for the new Pharmacist Shared Medicines (PSML) document type. This is the first public release of the PSML specification. Previous releases were made available on a trial basis to limited audiences.
By operation of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Establishing the Australian Digital Health Agency) Rule 2016, on 1 July 2016, all the assets and liabilities of NEHTA will vest in the Australian Digital Health Agency. In this website, on and from 1 July 2016, all references to "National E-Health Transition Authority" or "NEHTA" will be deemed to be references to the Australian Digital Health Agency. PCEHR means the My Health Record, formerly the "Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record", within the meaning of the My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), formerly called the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Act 2012 (Cth).
