'Making It Better' community pharmacy strategy announced

Proposals to expand pharmacy services, as part of a wider aim to improve public health and patient care, have been published by the government today.

Launching the publication, ‘Making it Better – A Strategy for Pharmacy in the Community’, Health Minister Angela Smith said that improving access to local pharmacies presented an "enormous opportunity" to apply pharmacists’ skills to enhance the health of the population.

"In addition to access to pharmaceutical services, the strategy proposes pharmacists working in partnership with others to provide more outreach services," she said.

“Hand in hand with these developments, the strategy contains proposals to exploit new information technologies to modernise the supply of medicines to the patient. In a few years the vast majority of prescriptions should be transferred electronically between GPs, pharmacists and the Central Services Agency," Mrs Smith added.

On average, 120,000 people visit Northern Ireland's 1,100 pharmacists every day.

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