If community pharmacy is to deliver on its potential as the “front door to the NHS” — and as a clinical home for the next generation of prescribing pharmacists — then integrated, interoperable and consistent access to patient records is not optional. It is essential.
Pharmacist-led clinical care in the community is growing rapidly, with expanding clinical services and a new generation of independent prescribers just weeks away from registration. But access to patient records is often limited, cumbersome and varies significantly between locations.
Community pharmacists must frequently rely on patients to recount their own medical histories — retelling their stories to different healthcare professionals with each new interaction.
Disjointed systems make accessing patient records time-consuming and burdensome for already overstretched pharmacy teams, who must juggle multiple logins and platforms while providing care. Feeding information back to general practice is equally inefficient, often relying on emails or PDFs. Homecare pharmacy teams also face barriers when sharing records with secondary care, owing to fragmented clinical systems.
There are, however, signs of improvement. Since the launch of Pharmacy First in England in January 2024, community pharmacies have gradually gained read-and-write access to relevant sections of GP patient records. In some areas, more comprehensive shared care records are available, giving clinicians access to patient information across both primary and secondary care.
The expansion of NHS prescribing services must be underpinned by the IT infrastructure
In June 2025, The Pharmaceutical Journal reported that in Scotland, Holyrood backed an amendment to the Care Reform (Scotland) Bill that could go even further, by creating a digital care record for every patient. The goal is to enable “Scottish health and social care information to be shared securely and efficiently amongst providers… so that people’s experiences of healthcare and social services are as safe and seamless as possible”.
Meanwhile, the Department of Health and Social Care has also set out plans for a ‘single patient record’ in England, backed by a £10bn NHS technology and transformation investment announce in the latest spending review, details of which were announced on 11 June 2025. It says a such a record would “give patients a unified view of their medical history two-way communication and active management of their healthcare”.
However, such a development project is ambitious — one that could take years, with several potential options to join up several settings, systems, records and clinical requirements. Even with funding in place, the roll-out of Pharmacy First in England from January 2024 was tainted by delays to IT infrastructure that left pharmacists without the access they would have expected at the launch of the service.
The developers of any single patient record will face competing priorities as they work to weave together the disparate threads of information held by different settings and systems across the NHS. Giving community pharmacists across all nations interoperable, read-write access to GP patient records must be central to their work.
Community pharmacies already deliver accessible, expert care to patients — a role that will only grow as NHS prescribing services expand. That expansion must be underpinned by the IT infrastructure and ease of access to records that empowers pharmacists to make the best possible clinical decision for patients.
Giving pharmacists the ability to add their notes directly to the shared record can only strengthen integration, while helping to build trusting, collaborative relationships across the healthcare system. PJ
