10146456Unlocking Productivity, Commercial Models and Better Prescribing Outcomes in Primary CareClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKCurrent prescription decision support tools primarily focus on new medicines, neglecting the larger issue of repeat prescriptions, which constitute 77% of all prescriptions, and the huge administrative burden they engender for clinicians. GPs can spend up to two hours a day managing repeat medicines and on average generate 375 prescriptions a week(13,12). Tools like EMIS and S1 are impractical when direct care is being delivered as they take too long to navigate; are complex ,hinder clinicians' understanding of prescriptions; and lack the flexibility to allow for clinical judgement. The importance of this issue has increasingly gained recognition with policy makers, with the [NHS Long Term Plan][0] expanding medicines optimisation work(2,9) and the Chief Pharmacist for England leading a [UK government commissioned][1] review into the nature and extent of overprescribing in 2021(2). The 2024 Darzi Investigation has also cited 'too little automation' within the NHS(39). [Professor Kamila Hawthorne][2], Chair of the Royal College of GPs, calls for "significant investment in GP practices and IT systems" due to "years of underfunding and inadequate workforce planning" and the College's 2023 survey of 2,600+ GPs found more than a quarter of respondents fearing their practice would be forced to close due to unmanageable workload pressures(40). Moreover, a 2019 survey of 200 GPs found that [37% believed they had prescribed the wrong course of treatment due to time pressures][3](10). To date, Cherub has partnered with five GP practices and a Primary Care Network(PCN) to identify bottlenecks in medicines management processes. Service evaluation testing demonstrated that their elementary prototype with basic clinical decision-making based on expertly-defined clinical pathways and gold-standard British national formulary(BNF) data successfully reduces the processing of repeat prescriptions requests in GP practices by 40% and improves clinician satisfaction to an NPS score of 10\. This project will develop the urgently-needed fully-functional evidenced platform to support time-constrained clinicians with the exploding issue of medicines management and optimisation in the UK's primary care market. The developed platform will fit within all the relevant clinician's NHS system seamlessly and automate medicines management workflows; embed robust clinical decisioning and risk stratification; and create custom parameter controls to account for regional prescribing variations to put the final decisioning in the hands of the clinicians, all based on expertly-defined pathways, NICE guidelines and British national formulary(BNF) gold standards. It will also provide efficacy evidence. [0]: https://www.longtermplan.nhs.uk/ [1]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/614a10fed3bf7f05ab786551/good-for-you-good-for-us-good-for-everybody.pdf [2]: https://www.rcgp.org.uk/News/Lib-Dem-Consultation-Response [3]: https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/doctors-short-appointment-times-patients/69964/#:~:text=Four%20in%20five%20said%20they,to%20less%20than%20ten%20minutes.