Wales

Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP) 

The Welsh assembly Government plan to implement the Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions Service in 2 phases. The First phase, which has been broadly implemented, was to bring pharmacy IT in Wales in line with minimum standards for computer hardware, support and network connectivity, anti-virus and off-site data backup.

Phase 2 of ETP in Wales involves prescription data being encoded on the prescription form as a 2 dimensional barcode. Pharmacies will use a special scanner to scan the 2-D barcode which will be received and interpreted by the pharmacy dispensary management software for processing. This service will not require a smartcard and the paper form (FP10) will continue to be the legal prescription.