Start-up offers online prescriptions to UK

'Allcures.com' is the latest UK company aiming to offer patients NHS and private prescriptions - as well as over the counter medicines - via the Internet.

Last month another UK start-up, Pharmacy 2U (see 'Web prescriptions get all clear from UK authorities' http://www.silicon.com/a34959 ), worked alongside the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) to set out regulations to sell medicines online.

Alex Dickson Leach, project manager at Allcures.com, said the RPS issued guidelines for dealing with online prescriptions, but then the National Pharmaceutical Society (NPS) stepped in and said it wouldn't offer insurance for this.

"Before we can go ahead we need to be insured," said Dickson Leach, adding: "The NPS is in discussions each month on the issue, but in the meantime we are speaking to independent insurance brokers."

She said that once they are insured - within the next month or so - customers can visit the site, enter their unique identification number from their prescription and have it dealt with. But customers still have to send the hard copy in the post.

The bricks-and-mortar arm of the company delivers the drugs through a third party within four days.

"We are aiming for the repeat-prescription market, which accounts for around 80 per cent of the market," Dickson Leach concluded.