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He created a wait-time busting prescription app in N.L., but it can't be used here

He created a wait-time busting prescription app in N.L., but it can't be used here

A St. John's health care professional has developed an online application that he says can reduce the amount of time to fill prescriptions, but the province's pharmacy board has told its members not to use it.

Mohammad Taher, a radiation therapist in St. John's, developed the app called pillz.ca.

Working at the Health Sciences Centre, Taher said he became frustrated seeing patients waiting hours to have prescriptions filled.

"I thought, let's try to fix this problem, make their lives easier and create this application where as soon as they get a prescription, they can just snap a picture of it an send it to the pharmacy."

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Taher said the app works and is being used in Ontario.

"With us, it's just a one-time trip to the pharmacy. You send it through our web app, when the prescription is ready the pharmacy calls you so you only spend about 5 minutes to a maximum of 10 minutes in the pharmacy just picking up your prescription and that's it."

But in Newfoundland and Labrador pillz.ca has hit a roadblock.

The registrar of the Newfoundland Pharmacy Board, Margot Priddle, said pharmacists can't accept prescriptions that come from an app. She said pharmacists must have an original, paper prescription in hand before filling it.

"The way that I understand that technology to work is that it is a picture of a prescription which is not considered a legitimate prescription. Right now our standards would prohibit that," said Priddle.

Taher says a patient must still present the paper prescription to receive medications, but pillz.ca speeds up the process.

Priddle says the board is advising pharmacists they can use a photo to check if they have a requested drug in stock, but advises them that they shouldn't begin filling it until they see the original prescription.

Furthermore, Priddle says apps like pillz.ca will be obsolete when a provincial electronic health record system becomes available.

Priddle says that system, which she says is coming soon, will give doctors a secure, electronic means to send prescriptions directly to pharmacists and eliminate the need for paper prescriptions altogether.

When asked when electronic health records will be available, Priddle could only say, "soon, but not next week."

For his part, Taher isn't convinced paper prescriptions will disappear.

"The registrar is right that an electronic prescription system is on its way, however, every pharmacy and physician will have to pay a fee to use the service," he wrote in an email to CBC.

"With rising overhead costs, we don't think many physicians and pharmacists will be able to afford the system and the inexpensive status quo of written prescriptions will remain."

Click here for more stories from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador.