The National Patient Prescription Tracking Service (NPPTS) enables patients to access and track their prescriptions online through the NHS App or their NHS account (by logging in on the NHS website).

NPPTS is a feature of the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) that utilises a combination of Spine and Pharmacy IT supplier systems’ information to provide item and prescription-level status updates to the NHS App.

This feature enables patients to access their prescription information online and monitor the status and availability of their prescribed EPS items. It builds on the increased amount of EPS information made available in the NHS App last year.

What is it?

The service aims to:

  • give visibility of the prescription journey to patients via the NHS App
  • reduce the burden on busy healthcare teams by reducing the number of queries from patients to pharmacy and GP practice teams

Pharmacy IT suppliers enable this functionality within their systems, and for most suppliers, the required data is already captured within their platforms. NHS England is continuing to work with pharmacy IT suppliers to make prescription readiness information available to patients.

In the future, the service is expected to support push notifications via the NHS App, alerting patients when their prescriptions are ready for collection.

Rollout of the functionality

This feature is being gradually rolled out nationwide as pharmacy IT suppliers onboard and activate it within their IT systems and across their customers’ pharmacies.

All pharmacy IT suppliers were invited to participate in the project, with some able to make changes to their systems sooner than others.  Progress updates and a list of the pharmacy IT suppliers working on implementing the functionality are available on NHS England’s NPPTS webpage about this project.

Commenting on the feature, Community Pharmacy England’s IT Policy Manager, Dan Ah-Thion, said:

“This feature, which started to be introduced last year, is continuing to help pharmacy teams manage queries. The functionality has been supported by Community Pharmacy England and the Community Pharmacy IT Group who have helped inform development. The continuation of this project aligns with the 10 Year Health Plan, which aims to enable patients to access a range of pharmacy services via the NHS App.”

“IT developments like this help improve the flow of communication between GP practices, pharmacies and patients. As more IT suppliers onboard, more pharmacies will be able to use the feature, which should help to ease some of their workload. Whilst today the feature provides a simple status check, in the future the introduction of notifications will make it even more useful.”

“We also continue to encourage the benefits of adopting a scan-to-shelf process. If you’re not using scan-to-shelf yet, now’s a great time to think about it. As NHS App readiness functionality continues to develop in the coming months, scan-to-shelf will be able to partner with notifications and help make sure patients get notified by NHS App at an optimal time when their medicines are actually ready—so they don’t turn up too early in the future. That would mean fewer interruptions and a better experience for patients.”

Actions for pharmacy teams

If your supplier is rolling out NPPTS, consider:

  • The benefits of adopting a scan-to-shelf process, if you are not already using this process.
  • If any of your patient communications will reference NPPTS.
  • How you will refer to the feature if and where needed, in the event of prescription readiness queries.
  • How will you communicate about the feature verbally or in writing?
  • Whether standard operating procedures and systems require updating (does your system change the statuses in the NHS App so that patients can see the right status at the right time).

If your supplier is not yet rolling out NPPTS, consider:

  • checking NHS England’s webpage about the project for supplier updates
  • asking your IT supplier about their plans for integrating this feature.

Further information

Read more, including FAQs, at our NPPTS webpage