Excellent feedback from pharmacists on the integration of CLEO EPS on the NHS England Pathfinder Independent Pharmacist Prescriber initiative

Excellent feedback from pharmacists on the integration of CLEO EPS on the NHS England Pathfinder Independent Pharmacist Prescriber initiative.

NHS England’s Pathfinder Independent Pharmacist Prescriber programme is receiving excellent feedback from some of the 187 community pharmacies who are using the system, as over 25,000 scripts have been completed. One pharmacist credited the benefits of the roll out of the system as the reason for not leaving the profession.

Following a contract signing in August 2024, the Independent Pharmacist Prescriber Pilot Programme has seen the team at CLEO Systems roll out CLEO EPS - a stand-alone electronic prescribing solution – across community pharmacies in England, enabling pharmacists in the community to prescribe for minor illnesses. Now around 190 pharmacies across England are fully live and are using CLEO to prescribe for patients.

The aim of the Pathfinder programme is to develop a framework for independent prescribing for patients in primary care, anticipating the situation in September 2026, when all newly qualified pharmacists will be registered as independent prescribers. It is the first programme to nationally fund community pharmacy to prescribe for NHS services.

CLEO EPS digitises the process of creating FP10 prescriptions and is achieving remarkable benefits for users where it has been deployed, including a vastly improved patient experience as well as the eradication of lost, stolen and illegible scripts, which in turn enhances patient safety.