Real-Time Prescription Monitoring

The Hon. T.T. NGO (14:53): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing.

The PRESIDENT: Regarding?

The Hon. T.T. NGO: About real-time prescription monitoring.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.T. NGO: The government made a commitment to introduce real-time prescription monitoring in the 2018-19 budget to address the critical issue of abuse of drugs and addiction. Victoria rolled out a trial of their SafeScript system in October last year and it rolled out the whole system statewide in May this year.

In 2016, 2,177 people died from prescription drug misuse in Australia, compared to the 1,293 who died in the road toll. My question to the minister is: what action has been taken to develop and implement real-time prescription monitoring to protect the lives of South Australians, and when will the system be fully operational?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:55): I thank the honourable member for his question. He rightly highlights that, after 16 years of neglect in this area, the Marshall Liberal government, going into the election, made a commitment to real-time prescription monitoring and in our first budget we committed $7.5 million to support implementation of RTPM for schedule 8 medicines in this state.

A real-time prescription monitoring system collects dispensing and prescription data and makes this information available via a health professional portal to inform clinical decision-making when prescribing or supplying drugs of dependence. A jurisdiction-specific regulator portal assists the jurisdictions with regulatory monitoring and compliance.

The software will provide both doctors and pharmacists with an instant alert if a patient receives multiple supplies of prescription-only schedule 8 medicines and a history of their dispensing record. Giving prescribers and pharmacists real-time information will help prevent overdose deaths and addiction associated with the use of prescription drugs.

The commonwealth and the states are working together to ensure that we have nationally interoperable prescribing monitoring software. Our election commitment will deliver on that. It will also ensure that we provide training and support for doctors and pharmacists to identify and help prescription drug users.

Since the budget commitment last September, in December 2018, Fred IT (which is a corporate name) implemented the commonwealth National Data Exchange component of the national real-time prescription monitoring scheme. The National Data Exchange element captures information from state and territory regulatory systems prescribing and dispensing software and from a range of external data sources to provide real-time detection and alerting.

Integration of the first jurisdiction's regulatory system with the National Data Exchange (NDE) is underway. That jurisdiction is the Australian Capital Territory. The remaining jurisdictions will be sequentially integrated during 2019-20. The funding and governance models will support the ongoing operation of the national RTPM system. SA Health is learning from the experience of other jurisdictions to develop the best system to be implemented in South Australia. SA Health has commenced the necessary detailed planning to ensure that the new system is implemented in line with the national time frame.