Pharmacy teams invited to participate in push notification pilot

Pharmacy teams have been invited to participate in a pilot for medicine readiness push notifications this autumn.

The pilot aims to improve the prescription tracking experience for patients using the NHS App, and test medicine readiness push notifications from the NHS App.

Currently, the NHS App does not notify patients when there is a change to the status of their prescription. This information is only available if the patient looks at their approved prescriptions in the app.

This pilot is open to a sample of pharmacies who provide prescription status updates to NHS England through their patient medication record systems.

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The systems that do this are:

• Apotec CRM (Apotec);
• Colombus (Boots);
• Pharmacy Manager (Cegedim);
• Titan (Invatech).

Early adopter pharmacies would be asked to support a two-day site visit to monitor how well the service is functioning and conduct research with patients. Some pilot pharmacies will also be invited to a 45-minute remote research session to provide feedback on their experience.

All pilot pharmacies must display a poster which makes patients aware of the push notification trial and encourages them to take part in research.

The exact dates of the pilot ‘depend on development and assurance’, according to the description, but most research sessions are expected to take place during working hours.

Pharmacies interested in taking part can complete the expression of interest form.

Other recent technology developments have been included in a bulletin from Community Pharmacy England (CPE) ahead of the Community Pharmacy IT Group’s (CP ITG) autumn meeting.

One of these developments involves more market engagement with pharmacy IT suppliers from 1 September until 20 October 2025, which NHS England announced in August.

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The aim is to expand the number of suppliers in the market and their capability to deliver digital clinical services.

The move will ‘open up the national clinical services IT supplier market to provide more IT choice and capability to pharmacists’ CPE’s bulletin said.

Another topic of discussion in the CP ITG meeting will be the pros and cons of scan-to-shelf technology. Pharmacy teams can submit feedback on their experience of this to [email protected].

The CP ITG has members from CPE, the National Pharmacy Association (NPA), the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS), the Company Chemists’ Association (CCA), and the Independent Pharmacies Association (IPA).

The group sets out digital proprieties and encourages the sector to engage with upcoming IT developments.

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In May 2025, a new feature in the NHS App was rolled out to 1,500 community pharmacies, allowing patients to track their prescriptions.

A revamped NHS App also featured heavily in the government’s 10 year plan for the NHS and Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the app would become a ‘digital front door’ to the NHS.