eMedicines Programme

The eMedicines Programme is part of the National Medication Safety Programme, which is jointly sponsored by the National Health Board/National Health IT Board, and the Health Quality & Safety Commission.

Medication errors and adverse drug events affect an unacceptable number of New Zealanders each year, with some resulting in permanent disabilities or death. The eMedicines Programme is introducing electronic systems to support the safe, effective and appropriate use of medicines.

The programme's goals are to:

• reduce patient harm and loss of life by reducing adverse medication events
• improve patient outcomes by providing better information to enable staff to focus more on delivering care and by providing patients and their families with better resources to support their care.
• better manage costs in DHB hospitals and in the community by reducing adverse medication events, improving medicines usage, and improving productivity.

• Pharmacy Clinical Integration
  • NZ ePrescription Service (NZePS)
  • Community Pharmacy Services Agreement (CPSA)
• ePrescribing and Administration (ePA)
• eMedicine Reconciliation (eMR)
• Universal list of Medicines (NZULM) and NZ Formulary (NZF) rollout

Pharmacy Clinical Integration

Pharmacy clinical integration is a term being used to describe a range of project initiatives that together will help to develop improved medicine management and support improving uptake of shared care plans.

NZ ePrescription Service (NZePS)

The New Zealand Electronic Prescription Service (NZePS) allows GPs to send prescriptions to community pharmacies electronically. A trial has been completed and NZePS will be progressively rolled out. Find out more.

Community Pharmacy Services Agreement

The Community Pharmacy Services Agreement (CPSA) is a new national agreement between community pharmacies in New Zealand and their local DHBs. It is the biggest change to how pharmacy services are funded in the past couple of decades. Find out more.

ePrescribing and Administration (ePA)

ePA allows medication to be prescribed and administration to be recorded electronically in hospitals. Phase two of the roll out of electronic prescribing and administration (ePA) and electronic medicine reconciliation (eMR) is underway. Find out more.

eMedicines Reconciliation (eMR)

eMedicines reconciliation (eMR) is being carried out in a number of district health boards. Find out more.

NZ Universal List of Medicines (NZULM)

The New Zealand Universal List of Medicines (NZULM) combines standardised medicine descriptions from the New Zealand Medicines Terminology (NZMT) with information from Medsafe and the PHARMAC Pharmaceutical Schedule to form an easily accessible one-stop shop for medicines information. Find out more.

NZ Medicines Formulary (NZF)

The NZ Formulary is a concise, point of care reference addressing the day-to-day needs of those prescribing, dispensing and administering medicines in New Zealand. Find out more.

Other useful resources

• National Medication Safety Programme Update December 2012
• New Zealand Health IT Cluster - Global Leaders in eHealth - View on Youtube 2 November 2012
• Application guidelines for Director-Generals waiver to allow electronic prescribing (17KB, PDF)
• National Health IT Board Priority Programmes for 2012/14 (Table)
• Towards 2014 - National Health IT Board newsletters
• NHITB Towards Better Access eBooklet

Contact Us:

If you have any feedback or questions please email enquiries@ithealthboard.health.nz with the name of the programme and your query. We will respond to you within 5 working days.