GP practices that implement online appointments and use the internet for repeat prescription bookings or to access patients’ records, will be able to apply for extra Government funding.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said that the additional funding is to support greater online access to GP services, as he wants to see a ‘paperless NHS’ by 2018.

Mr Hunt has therefore mandated NHS England to introduce online GP appointment booking, repeat prescription requests and access to full patient records by 2015.

According to the Department of Health (DH), local health providers will be able to apply for the funding if they implement the services and the DH will match their spending. The department also announced that it will be putting up a total of £500m in funding instead of the £260m previously promised.

Commenting on the increase in funding, Mr Hunt said that paperless systems help staff in A&E departments by assisting them with patient management and giving them instant access to a patient’s medical notes and care records.

This means that patients can avoid going through lots of unnecessary diagnostic tests and may not even need to be admitted to hospital overnight in cases where A&E staff are not aware of their background and history.

It also means, he said, that patients are less likely to be given the wrong medication, or something they might be allergic to, because clinicians do not have access to the right information. Patients are also less likely to get stuck in hospital because no-one can decipher handwritten discharge forms.

Under the proposals, paperwork listing medicines and drugs will be sent directly from doctors’ surgeries to pharmacies, bypassing the need for patients to pick up a printed prescription and take it to a pharmacy for processing.