Birmingham Community Healthcare pilots electronic prescribing

Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is piloting the CLEO SOLO electronic prescribing solution (EPS) in its children’s services.

The two-year pilot is planned to launch in March 2025  in community paediatrics and the ADHD nursing service, which have both historically relied on handwritten prescriptions.

CLEO SOLO EPS integrates with existing electronic patient record systems and digitises the process of sending FP10 prescriptions to community pharmacies with the aim of addressing the challenges associated with manual prescribing, such as risk of errors and delays.

John Morrison, chief pharmacist at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are looking forward to piloting CLEO SOLO EPS, which has the potential to transform the way prescriptions are managed in our community paediatrics and the ADHD nursing service.

“By digitising the prescription process, we will be addressing some of the challenges we’ve faced with manual prescribing.

“We are excited to see the positive impact this pilot will have for our clinicians and patients.”

The trust aims to mitigate the risks associated with manual prescribing, making it easier for people to collect prescriptions and reducing the administrative burden on clinicians.

Emma Dew, sales and marketing director at CLEO Systems, said: “We are delighted to be working with Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust on this pilot.

“CLEO SOLO EPS has already delivered remarkable benefits in similar settings, where it is reducing prescribing errors and administrative burdens and vastly improving the patient experience.”

Upon successful completion of the pilot at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS FT, the trust plans to evaluate the possibility of expanding the use of CLEO SOLO EPS to other services across the organisation.

This pilot project follows the implementation in July 2024 of CLEO SOLO EPS at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s pregnancy assessment unit under at three-year contract.

NHS England signed a contract with CLEO Systems in August 2024 for a stand-alone EPS solution for pharmacies participating in the Community Pharmacy Pathfinder Programme.