Since July 2020 NHS Digital has established a collection of data from electronic and paper prescriptions submitted to the NHSBSA for reimbursement each month.

The data comprises prescriptions for medicines that are dispensed or supplied by community pharmacists, appliance contractors and dispensing doctors in England.

The data also includes:

prescriptions submitted by prescribing doctors, for medicines personally administered in England prescriptions written in England and dispensed outside of England prescriptions written in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey but dispensed in England

Data includes prescriptions issued by prescribers in:

general practice community clinics hospital clinics dentists community nursing services.

There are around 90 to 100 million rows of patient-level data in this collection per month. Each row represents each medicine or appliance on a prescription and includes personal data (for example NHS number) and special category data (data concerning health).

Timescales for dissemination of agreed data can be found under 'Our Service Levels' at the following link: [