On Friday 3^nd April historic new legislation was signed into Irish law by Minister for Health Simon Harris. The legislation removed the requirement for a physical or hard copy of a prescription to be presented in pharmacies in order to collect prescriptions that are sent via the HSE’s secure Healthmail service.

GPs can now create a prescription in their GP software system as normal and send this directly to a pharmacy via Healthmail. The pharmacy can then dispense the prescription to the patient as normal and without requiring the patient to present a signed hard copy of the prescription. All prescriptions will be stored in the HSE’s Healthmail servers to ensure a digital record is maintained.

This represents a significant change both to Irish law and to how GPs can send patient prescriptions to pharmacies throughout the country. Clanwilliam Health has supported Healthmail since its launch in 2014 and we have developed numerous Healthmail integrations into our GP software systems. Now that the legislation is in place to enable this e-prescribing, we are pro-actively working with the HSE, eHealth Ireland, our GP technology user groups and other stakeholders to ensure the Healthmail e-prescription service is enhanced in all of our GP technology systems.

Eileen Byrne, Clanwilliam Health Managing Director said: “All of our GP technology systems integrate with Healthmail today, and we look forward to continuing to work with eHealth Ireland, the HSE and our GP user groups to develop and improve these integrations. I also have no doubt that our GP users will be delighted to finally get rid of their archaic dot matrix printers from their surgeries.”

Clanwilliam Health continues to deliver functionality designed to help our users in GP practices, care homes, consultant clinics, pharmacies and hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Product additions such as video consultations, electronic referrals for COVID-19 testing, Healthmail integrations and eScript have been made widely available for users during this crisis and our development teams continue to work on delivering new functionality designed to help all of users.