To ask the Minister of Health for an update on future plans to enable General Practice to manage electronic prescribing systems.

Work has begun on a programme of work, led by the Health and Social Care Board to consider options for replacement of the current written prescription system with an electronic prescribing system. This aims to improve the patient experience by streamlining the entire prescribing and dispensing process. While this work is still at a relatively early stage, it is hoped that we may be in a position to possibly identify and procure a suitable IT solution to progress this programme of work during 2022 thus enabling the project to move into implementation during 2023 at the earliest.