NHS Health & Safety leaders have a growing opportunity to make electronic prescribing part of a more proactive approach to patient safety. Digital prescribing systems are already embedded across hospitals, but their greatest value can come from treating safety functionality as something that is continuously tested and improved. The ePRaSE programme assessed 45 NHS trusts using 13 prescribing systems, providing organisations with a practical way to understand how effectively their systems respond to defined prescribing-risk scenarios.

The findings create a strong case for optimisation rather than simply implementation. ePRaSE recorded an average “good mitigation” score of around 50% across the scenarios tested, but this was a measure of system performance against specific risks, not an overall patient-safety score. More importantly, performance varied between trusts using the same technology, showing that configuration, maintenance and local workflows can make a significant difference. This gives healthcare organisations an opportunity to use evidence to strengthen the digital safeguards already in place.

That opportunity extends across the healthcare safety function. Pharmacy teams bring expertise in medicines management and clinical decision support, while digital and Health & Safety professionals contribute risk management, governance and continuous-improvement expertise. Bringing these disciplines together can help organisations regularly review how prescribing systems operate in practice and ensure digital controls remain aligned with clinical workflows as services develop.

The national environment is also moving in this direction. The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSSIB) has recommended a national framework for core electronic prescribing and medicines administration safety, alongside stronger assurance and support for NHS organisations. HSSIB also identifies ePRaSE as a tool for manufacturers and NHS organisations to support ongoing improvement and optimisation, reinforcing the value of demonstrated safety performance.

For the Health & Safety sector, this creates opportunities to bring digital assurance into established safety-management programmes. Regular system testing can complement incident learning, governance reviews, staff engagement and technology upgrades, while giving healthcare leaders clearer evidence of where controls are performing well and where further improvement can deliver value. It also creates a stronger basis for procurement conversations, with safety performance becoming an important part of evaluating digital healthcare solutions.

The commercial and operational opportunity is therefore to move beyond viewing electronic prescribing as a completed technology project. NHS organisations can continue to extract greater safety value from these systems by investing in testing, optimisation and collaboration between Health & Safety, pharmacy and digital teams. For the sector, the takeaway is clear: the next stage of digital medicines safety is not simply implementing better technology, but continuously improving the safety performance of the technology already in use.