Boots selects Spinal Tap for prescriptions

Boots has announced that it is to use Quicksilva’s Spinal Tap integration software, on top of the company’s existing Smartscript solution, to allow its branches with dispensing pharmacies to receive electronic transfers of prescriptions (ETP) under the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

Quicksilva will be providing both its software and consultancy expertise so that Boots’ existing pharmacy management system can communicate with the data spine. Spinal Tap will sit on a central location within Boots’ data centre and convert data into the data format required by ETP.

Dave Bottomley, business systems manager for healthcare at Boots, said: "The compliance requirements set out by CfH require a significant investment of time and expertise to ensure that our applications can achieve the necessary authority to deploy.

"By working with Quicksilva, much of this complexity has been taken out of our hands. This has allowed us to concentrate on delivering improvements to our systems to help our pharmacists, and to support out commitment to excellent and expert patient care."

The decision to use integration specialist Quicksilva marked a change in IT strategy for Boots, who last year were planning to obtain a certificate of deployment from Connecting for Health for their existing pharmacy software, which would enable access to the data spine.

Smartscript is Boots’ bespoke version of QicSCRIPT, a pharmacy solution and patient medication record system developed by Dublin-based System Solutions. The software is installed in over 1,200 pharmacies in the Boots chain, and covers around 12.5m people.

Boots bought a licence from Systems Solutions, which included access to the source code, so they could develop the software themselves. System Solutions’ standard version of QicSCRIPT was given technical authority to deploy last autumn, allowing it to connect to the NHS data spine and EPS service.

Gayna Hart, managing director at Quicksilva, said: "We are delighted to be working with such a major healthcare provider as Boots. Its commitment to patient care, such as its initiatives to train its people on avian flue to assist with customer enquiries, demonstrates its forward-looking attitude and strength in the market."