Discussions are on-going on ways to use electronic links already established between hospitals, GP practices and NHS NSS, and about to be provided to community pharmacies, to allow prescribing and dispensing data to be collated from the different NHS sources.Information about medicines prescribed and dispensed in the community is already available nationally. However, developing a robust combined database for hospital and community prescribing for NHSScotland will present many challenges and will require further refinement to the existing primary care database and the development of an electronic prescribing system for hospitals.To progress this work, the Executive has funded the further development of the Prescribing Information System for Scotland (PRISMS), which gives access to prescribing information for prescriptions dispensed in the community for the past five years.