83% of pharmacies support going paperless, PSNC’s IT survey reveals

The results of the PSNC Community Pharmacy IT Group’s (CP ITG’s) IT arrangements survey revealed that 83 per cent of the respondents support the goal of going paperless.

The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) asked community pharmacy teams to complete the survey between late 2021 and October 2022.

The survey was designed to gather information on frontline pharmacy teams’ perspectives about community pharmacy IT and their pharmacies’ IT arrangements.

It was found that more than half of pharmacies experience at least one IT outage per month (lasting at least one hour). Over 40% reported poor mobile phone signal and limited internet connectivity options at their pharmacy. 80% agreed that mobile devices would help working within pharmacy, but most reported no laptop and no tablet device available for use in the pharmacy

Commenting on the survey results, PSNC’s Community Pharmacy IT Policy Manager, Daniel Ah-Thion, said:

“We were delighted to learn that most contractors now support the idea of going paperless. Aside from the obvious environmental benefits, community pharmacy going paperless will also help reduce costs and streamline contractors’ business operations in the long term. PSNC and the Community Pharmacy IT Group will continue to share best practice examples on how pharmacy teams can remove the use of paper from their systems.”