Electronic Prescribing - Release Note v1.1

From late 2019, electronic prescribing will provide an option for prescribers and their patients to have a digital prescription as an alternative to a paper-based prescription. Electronic prescriptions and paper prescriptions will co-exist. Electronic prescribing will not be mandatory, and patients and prescribers will be able to choose an electronic prescription.

The Australian Digital Health Agency is developing the technical framework to support electronic prescriptions. This technical framework and associated documents will detail the requirements for clinical software to ensure alignment with the legal framework, adhere to privacy and security principles and maintain patient choice. The technical framework identifies the clinical software changes and has been developed in consultation with the clinical software sector.

These technical documents include:

• A Solution Architecture to provide an overview of the architectural components of the end-to-end national electronic prescribing system;
• A Conformance Assessment Scheme which describes the scheme for assessing the conformance of software against the Conformance Profile involved in the electronic prescribing process; and
• A Conformance Profile to summarise the functional and non-functional requirements for software that supports participation in electronic prescribing.

PRELIMINARY versions of these documents are contained in this release as drafts to software vendors to have early access to the technical framework and what will be required to enable electronic prescribing.

In this iteration of documents, the Solution Architecture and Conformance Profile refer to a token-based ‘open’ delivery model for consumer choice of supply. The Agency and TWG are currently finalising an additional architectural model referred to as an Active Script List (ASL) where consumers can access a list of their active prescriptions at a pharmacy without the need for a token.

It is anticipated that the finalised versions of these documents will not differ greatly to the draft versions.