4. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on the roll-out of Medicines Transcribing and E-discharge across all hospitals in Wales? OAQ52577

Yes. Five health boards have the medicines transcribing and e-discharge system live within their hospitals. I'll refer to it from now on as the MTeD system; it'll make things easier and quicker. The two remaining health boards have their own local systems with similar functionality to MTeD in providing discharge information to general practitioners.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and I support what you've been saying about electronic discharge and I welcome the progress that's been made in trying to achieve that. I hear what you say about MTeD, but I've also heard recently that a new, more integrated service is also being developed that will or could ultimately replace MTeD. Is this the case? It does seem a little odd, if a new system is being evolved before MTeD has been even rolled out across Wales, that we are going down this line at this point.

I think it would be foolish to try and pause MTeD and try to do something different. If you look at what we've done, it's part of the Welsh clinical portal. Practitioners generally are very supportive of it and positive about it—not just practitioners within hospitals and GPs but also within the pharmacy world too—and there's recognition that we are in a better position than England, where they're trying to roll out something with similar functionality, and, in Scotland, whilst they have some tools for electronic discharge, they still have a largely paper-based system. So, I think we need to get on to roll out something that is consistent and then understand how we could develop and improve that in the future, and I have greater ambition still for improving the discharge process from hospital, making greater use of electronic prescribing and sharing of information across our health system and, in particular, to see what more community pharmacy can do to help improve transferring information and people out of hospital to make sure that their medicines are ready for them upon discharge in their own setting.