The Finance Minister confirmed the funding on Tuesday
Paper prescriptions are to be scrapped under the latest public service transformation announced by Stormont’s Finance Minister.
John O’Dowd announced £102.6million for six projects to continue to drive forward the transformation of public services in Northern Ireland. The Transformation Fund is part of the £235million provided by the UK Government for public sector transformation as part of the financial package to restore the Executive.
£42million of that funding will be allocated to the Department of Health for the ePharmacy Primary Care Digital Reform Programme, which will deliver electronic prescription transfer and a new digital platform for community pharmacy clinical services, expanding access to care and bringing treatment closer to patients’ homes.
The ePharmacy Primary Care Digital Reform Programme will deliver an electronic prescription transfer programme, making paper prescriptions a thing of the past. Prescriptions will be digitally transferred from prescribers, GPs, or Out of Hours to community pharmacies, streamlining the process for patients.
In addition, a new digital platform will manage the delivery of clinical services to the public through community pharmacies, improving patient safety, expanding access to care for patients and bringing treatment closer to people’s homes.
On the ePharmacy project, Health Minister Mike Nesbitt said: “With over 45 million items prescribed and dispensed annually across Primary Care in Northern Ireland, transitioning from paper prescriptions to a digital system will genuinely transform patient experience.
“This project and the new digital platform will help to make Health and Social Care as safe as possible, accelerate primary care reform and help support our move towards a Neighbourhood model of care for primary, community and social care.”
£29.2million has also been earmarked for the Together for Families project, a new partnership between the Department of Health, The National Lottery Community Fund and the Voluntary and Community sector, which will establish a regionwide, tiered model of early help to ensure families can access the right help, at the right time and in the right place.
The National Lottery Community Fund will contribute an additional £30million to the project – its first strategic investment of this kind in Northern Ireland.
The Department for Communities will receive £16million for their Pathways to Work and Wellbeing proposal. The Department for Communities has established a Commission on Work and Wellbeing as part of a wider initiative to support more people with ill health and disabilities to enter and remain in employment. Delivered in partnership with the Department of Health and the Department for the Economy, the funding will help build stronger integration between employability and health services to support more people to find and sustain employment.
The Minister also confirmed £6million for his own department’s Digital Workplace programme to modernise records and information management across the Civil Service, to reduce duplication and manual handling, helping to support faster access to information and freeing up staff time for citizen-facing activity.
£4million was allocated to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs’ Bovine Tuberculosis Research Project to deliver a first-of-its-kind regionalised pilot, working with partners across Ireland to redesign bovine tuberculosis control, which will be accompanied by approximately £5.6million of funding from the Irish Government’s Shared Island Fund.
The Department of Finance also received £5.3million for the NISRA Data Linkage Office to deliver two pathfinder projects to examine the capability to safely link data across departments in support of evidence-based policy making, improving outcomes, and better targeting of public services.
Announcing the funding, Minister O’Dowd said: “ The Executive is committed to changing how we deliver services to improve lives, strengthen communities, and achieve better outcomes, as set out in the Programme for Government.
“At its heart, transformation is about working differently to make services more effective, resilient, and sustainable, especially in a time of constrained public finances.
“Last year, I announced £129million from the Transformation Fund for six public sector projects across healthcare, special educational needs, justice and infrastructure.
“I am now pleased to announce the second tranche of funding and a further £102.6 million for an additional six projects to support the continued transformation of our services. This is complemented by a further £30 million from the National Lottery Community Fund and £5.6million from the Shared Island Fund.”
He added: “The Transformation Fund is a key step in improving public services and delivering the reforms people need and deserve.
“This investment will not only deliver greater efficiency and long-term savings across government, but will also strengthen healthcare, support families, help our farmers and the agri-food sector, and lay the groundwork for bold, system-wide change in the years ahead.”
Speaking as the funding was announced, the Secretary of State said: “This £102.6 million investment is a significant milestone for Northern Ireland, and a clear signal of this Government’s commitment to supporting the Executive to deliver better public services for the people of Northern Ireland.
“At the heart of this funding is a simple goal: making public services work better for the people who rely on them every day.
“The full allocation of the £235million transformation fund is supporting the framework to transform service delivery for the long term.
“I look forward to seeing the results of all successful projects in the months ahead.”
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