NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) has implemented Orion Health Medicines, software that gives GPs information regarding a patient’s medication when they are admitted to hospital.

The software enables a patient’s complete medication history to be compiled and contained in their record, providing clinicians with more accurate information as to what the patient has been prescribed when they were admitted to the hospital.

Similarly, it allows GPs to see if any medication was changed, stopped, or prescribed when a patient is sent home through immediate electronic discharge letters.

The software uses information from the Scottish Care Information – a national system that integrates primary and secondary care – and then matches it with data from the national Emergency Care Summary, which draws information from GP systems.

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The gathered data means that clinicians can gain a clearer understanding of the medication, alongside drug information from previous hospital admissions. As a patient moves around the hospitals, the system will add additional information from their patient admission systems.

When a patient is ready to be discharged, the system will conveniently create an immediate discharge letter including discharge medication information.

The software is now live at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, and is using the system for medicines reconciliation across 11 hospital sites, with 77,000 immediate discharge letters. Over the coming years, the software will be integrated with an e-prescribing system.

Alastair Bishop, programme lead at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said: “Clinicians have said it is helpful to be able to see what medications patients were taking last week, six months ago, or last year.

“Being able to see what has changed gives them useful information about how a patient’s treatment has progressed. This can give clinicians a more complete picture on which to make informed decisions about any changes that need to be made.

“Previously, stopped medication might be omitted from the discharge letter, meaning it wasn’t clear to the GP whether this medication had been deliberately stopped.

“We’re seeing benefits in that patients’ discharge medicines are reconciled with their admission medicines, hospital clinicians can spend less time manually transcribing medicines information, and GPs are not having to chase the hospital to find out why certain decisions around medications have been made during a patient’s stay.”