{"id":307634,"date":"2026-01-28T07:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T07:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/307634\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T07:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T07:48:09","slug":"towards-a-national-medicines-record-what-it-might-mean-for-patient-safety-and-pharmacy-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/307634\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a National Medicines Record: what it might mean for patient safety and pharmacy practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s Minister for Health has announced a National Medicines Record. What is it, and what will it achieve?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Medicine safety has long depended on pharmacists making critical decisions with incomplete information. As prescribing becomes increasingly fragmented across face-to-face care, telehealth and digital platforms, those gaps are widening \u2013 with serious consequences for patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reforms announced by Minister for Health and Ageing Mark Butler this morning aim to address this issue, eventually leading to a National Medicines Record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The announcement follows advocacy by Alison Collins<\/a> after the death of her daughter Erin, who died in 2024 after being prescribed medicines through multiple digital health platforms without a complete view of her medical history.<\/p>\n

Erin\u2019s story<\/p>\n

Erin was 24 years old and had been taking multiple medicines for her mental health. She had been hospitalised multiple times for problems stemming from medicine misuse and was placed on daily staged supply pickup of her medicines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hospital care teams were so concerned they placed multiple warning messages in her My Health Record. However, these warnings were not accessed by telehealth services or local pharmacies prior to her fatal overdose.<\/p>\n

Erin\u2019s case highlighted systemic vulnerabilities that pharmacists have warned about for years, particularly as digital prescribing expands faster than the safeguards designed to support safe, coordinated care.<\/p>\n

The first step<\/p>\n

Initially, the reforms would require all medicines information from online prescribers to be uploaded to My Health Record For pharmacists, this will make a fuller picture of all the medicines a patient has been prescribed more visible. This is critical given the increasing number of prescribers an individual may have with the rise of telehealth and condition-specific providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under the proposed changes, medicines prescribed and dispensed through online platforms \u2013 including the clinical context for prescribing \u2013 would be made available through My Health Record. This is intended to help reduce the risk of medicine\u00a0 errors, adverse drug reactions and inappropriate use by ensuring healthcare professionals have access to more complete and timely information.<\/p>\n

The path to a National Medicines Record<\/p>\n

The reforms also commit the Government to designing and developing a National Medicines Record using existing digital health infrastructure, including electronic prescribing, the Active Script List and My Health Record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While details are still emerging, the proposal has the potential to address a core challenge for pharmacists: how to identify and resolve medicines-related risks without a reliable, up-to-date picture of a patient\u2019s full medicines history.<\/p>\n

Welcoming the announcement, PSA National President Professor Mark Naunton MPS noted it aligns with the profession\u2019s long standing advocacy.<\/p>\n

\u2018Pharmacists have consistently sought better-connected digital health systems to improve patient safety with medicines. It\u2019s something PSA has been advocating for over many years, including through our flagship medicine safety report series,\u201d Prof. Naunton said. <\/p>\n

\u2018Access to a more complete and reliable medicines record has the potential to significantly improve patient safety and strengthen clinical decision-making.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The announcement is fully aligned with PSA\u2019s ongoing advocacy to improve medicines safety systems and ensure pharmacists are supported as medicines experts across all settings of care,\u2019 he continued.<\/p>\n

\u2018PSA will engage in the consultation for these proposals and continue to work with the Government to support system improvements that make medicine use in Australia safer.\u2019<\/p>\n

A consultation period is now underway to guide the inclusion of medicines information from all online prescribers by default, with the first phase expected to be completed by December 2026. The Government has also flagged ongoing enhancements to the 1800MEDICARE app to support medicines management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Minister for Health has announced a National Medicines Record. What is it, and what will it achieve?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[274],"tags":[18,135,19,17,46768,462,63152,150763],"class_list":{"0":"post-307634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-medical-records","13":"tag-medication","14":"tag-medicine-safety","15":"tag-my-health-record"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}