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National Patient Prescription Tracking Service

The National Patient Prescription Tracking Service allows patients to access and track their prescriptions online.

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What we’re doing and why

The national prescription tracking service for patients is a new part of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS). It allows patients to access consistent information about their prescriptions online and track the status and readiness of their prescribed items. 

The service aims to: 

  • give more visibility of the prescription journey via the NHS App

  • inspire more people to use digital services for ordering and viewing their prescriptions

  • remove burden from front line services by reducing common patient prescription queries

  • save clinical time that can be spent better elsewhere

How the process will work

When a patient views their prescription in the NHS App, the app calls the National Patient Prescription Tracking Service to get and display the status of the prescription.

NHS England is responsible for the National Patient Prescription Tracking Service and the NHS App.

 

The national prescription tracking service collaborates with our EPS assured dispensing supplier partners. Where possible, our design is based on reusing functionality that they already have. This allows us to join up the information for patients on a national scale and level up the digital experience across England.

The new service is enabled by the pharmacy system pushing minimal required information to a new NHS England endpoint. For most dispensing suppliers this will be data that is readily available in their local system. Visit the Prescription Status Update API page for more information.

This information is pushed to a new NHS England data store. The service is triggered by an NHS App user viewing their prescription information in the NHS App via the Prescriptions for Patients API.

Also, we are looking into the use of the NHS Notify service to send a push notification to the NHS App. If used, the user will be informed when their prescription is ready to collect. The notification is intended to link to the digital prescription, offering a seamless end to end app journey.

What's ready to use now

We have a national feature in the NHS app that allows users to view their digital prescriptions. We are now piloting the ability to track the status of a prescription via the NHS App with a smaller set of users. This is slowly being rolled out nationally as we onboard dispensing suppliers.

Patients can use the NHS App to view prescription details, order repeat prescriptions, and generate a barcode for medication collection. It also allows patients to see the items prescribed, the prescription type, and who the prescribing professional is.

User research and discovery

User research with patients tells us that people do not have access to reliable status information about their prescriptions. For this reason, a high number of patients contact their GP surgery or pharmacy for updates on their prescriptions. This creates a poor experience for patients and an increased burden on front line services.

Over 30 million repeat prescriptions are ordered through the NHS App every year. Improving visibility on the prescription journey allows patients to be even more actively involved in their healthcare. We are currently undertaking research with patients and pharmacies to understand the experience this change has had.

Prescription tracking via the NHS App will allow patients to:

Check if a repeat prescription order request has been approved by the GP​

Prescribers want patients to be better informed about the status of a prescription. Patients are often left confused about where their prescription is, or what the next step in the process is. The GP practice then has to spend time and effort resolving these queries.

Language used around GP approval of prescription requests differs amongst participants and can make updates unclear.

Analysis of NHS App survey feedback shows that patients consistently check when their requests have been approved by using the status features of the app, and comment that this is a useful feature for them.

Users of the current 'Approved prescriptions' expect to see where they are in the prescription journey. For example, approved, with pharmacy, or ready to collect.

Check if a nominated repeat prescription is being processed by the pharmacy​

There is currently little visibility of what happens once participants request a prescription, with most citing they "wait a few days" and then go to or contact their pharmacy.

Analysis of feedback on prescriptions on the NHS App tells us that patients need continuous reassurance that their repeat prescription request has been received and that it is being processed through various stages. Patients currently do not know which part of the process the prescription is in and need to have sight of this at each different stage. This provides patients with expected timelines and reduces burden on pharmacies.

Patients have no confirmation that their prescription requests have been made with a prescriber, resulting in them chasing before a prescription exists. Pharmacies too want to keep patients better informed about their prescriptions and when they are ready for collection. Patients knowing when a prescription is ready for collection would help to control the flow of patients within the pharmacy.

Providing patients with progress updates at an individual item level could help with tracking prescriptions and also managing patients’ expectations of what they’re getting from the pharmacy​. Patients often feel that there should be a status next to each of the medications they have ordered so they know what's happening with each item​.

Patients specifically want to know how long the process is taking. If things are going to be delayed, then they should be explicitly made aware of this. Patients are increasingly frustrated with the lack of status updates about their medications, particularly in the face of unprecedented stock issues. As a result, GP Practices are often required to set expectations around prescription timelines in the absence of prescription tracking.

Presence of a digital 'approved' prescription on the NHS App does not indicate to patients what stage of the process their medications are at. Patients need explicit indication of the process and the individual states within, although users are using it as a way of checking statuses.

Check if a nominated repeat prescription is ready to collect​

EPS statuses 'to be dispensed' and 'with dispenser' did not meet participant expectations. They would all expect to receive a 'Ready to collect' message to be sent shortly after the 'with dispenser' message.

Pharmacies want to keep patients better informed about their prescriptions and when they are ready for collection. Patients knowing when a prescription is ready for collection would help to control the flow of patients within the pharmacy.

Smaller pharmacies cannot afford technology needed to send a ‘ready for collection’ message to patients.

Know when a delivery service prescription has been dispatched by the pharmacy​

Patients want to know how long the process is taking. If things are going to be delayed, then they should be made explicitly aware. There needs to be clear indication when the prescription arrives at the pharmacy, so that people can estimate delivery or collection dates.

Collect a non-nominated acute prescription from a community pharmacy using the barcode shown against the prescription in the NHS App ​

Patients are often advised to go to the incorrect pharmacy to pick up medications, as clinicians only look at the nomination on record, not where the prescription has actually been sent to, or the prescription has been raised as a non-nominated.

Information for dispensing suppliers

All dispensing suppliers will need to onboard to this service to ensure national coverage of the patient facing tracking service.

To help dispensing suppliers that have not onboarded to this service yet, here are some useful links:

Please contact [email protected] to receive an onboarding pack.

Information for third party patient facing apps

We are currently piloting this service within the NHS App. In the future, we intend to make the Prescriptions for Patients FHIR API available for third parties to implement the service too.

Roadmap

This service went live in September 2024 as a pilot with the following suppliers:

  • Apotec 
  • Boots 
  • Cegedim 
  • Invatech

To increase national coverage of the service we will be working with the next set of suppliers, starting with EMIS.

Contact us

If you have any enquiries relating to the national prescription tracking service for patients, or you are interested in onboarding to this service, please contact [email protected].

Last edited: 11 April 2025 12:32 pm