Bucks hospitals are set to get a £1.6 million cash injection in a bid to improve technology and cut medical errors.

Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust will be given the money to help them roll out state-of-art technology including electronic prescribing and medicines administration.

The Trust says the new systems will build up a complete electronic record, ensure “rapid” access to potentially lifesaving information on prescribed medicines, reduce duplication of information gathering, and crucially, reduce potentially deadly medication errors by up to 50 per cent when compared to the old paper systems.

The Health Minister Stephen Hammond announced the 12 trusts due to receive a share of £78 million national funding to support the increased use of electronic prescribing and medicines administration (ePMA) on Monday.

Chief pharmacist at the Trust, Jayne Ballinger, said: “We are excited about the opportunity E-prescribing brings, to transform the way we work and improve the safety of medicines for patients.”

Andrew Davies, director of hospital pharmacy, NHS Improvement, said there is evidence that electronic prescribing system improve safety for patients and “reduce risk of harm”.

He added: “I’m delighted so many trusts have submitted successful bids to accelerate the introduction of these systems to provide safer, better quality patient care. We are now looking for more trusts to bid for funding by the end of January.”