A PIONEERING project to create software to computerise medical prescriptions has been delayed due to the size of the task involved.

Malvern Link-based Hadley Healthcare Solutions is one of three companies which in April won the opportunity from the Government to develop a system of paperless prescriptions to reduce fraud and administration costs.

Company director Mike Hadley said: "Creating a system for Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions (ETP) has taken a lot longer than anybody thought.

"The first pharmacy should have been using it by now but whole thing got delayed and probably won't be starting until the New Year."

The system will mean a doctor enters a patient's prescription needs into a computer and sends them electronically both to a requested pharmacy and to the Prescription Pricing Authority.

After the patient has collected the medicine, the pharmacist will then send confirmation of his actions to the pricing authority, where details are matched.

Mr Hadley added: "At the moment you take your prescription along to a pharmacy which dispenses medicine.

"They have to write exactly what was supplied, rubber stamp it, parcel it all up and send it to a pricing authority which manually counts and prices everything and enters it into a computer.

"If all the information is electronically entered then it saves doing it again and it cuts the opportunity for fraud. It's quite exciting."

The experiment is expected to run for six months after which an ETP should be adopted and in use by 2004.