Sixteen hospitals across England are to get nearly £16 million to introduce digital prescribing systems.

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust are all taking the largest share with each being given £1.485m.

Patients and healthcare staff will benefit from single electronic hospital patient records. Electronic prescribing systems have been shown to save time and money by reducing unnecessary bureaucracy. They can also reduce medication errors by up to 30 per cent when compared with the old paper systems.

The funding is part of a £78 million investment to achieve a commitment in the NHS Long Term Plan to eliminate paper prescribing in hospitals and introduce digital prescribing across the entire NHS by 2024.

Since 2018, 216 NHS trusts have received a share of this fund and the proportion of trusts with an electronic prescription and medicines administration (ePMA) system is expected to have risen from 19 per cent in 2018 to more than 80 per cent by March 2021.