Public can now get an online access to the every year information given by England’s doctors on the 900million medicine prescriptions written. Some part of the NHS staff is only allowed to see the information at the moment.

The move has been reported to make a lot of improvement when it comes to treatment and research and also health as more evidence will be provided for patients, according to a little-noticed section of HM Treasury’s Plan for Growth.

In a one-line section headed “Opening up prescription data”, the document states: “Government will look to publish prescribing data at practice level subject to an evaluation and impact assessment by the NHS Information Centre.”

Only two years back the idea was ruled out by the NHS Information Centre.

Commercial companies had earlier also made many requests for such data access and it was then that the issue was raised.

Every year medicines worth £8billion are prescribed by doctors and chemists and local data on prescriptions is taken into consideration for this purpose.

The NHS Information Centre said, “In 2008 that commercial companies will have significant potential benefits in obtaining access to this data by analyzing it then presenting it to managers at a cost to the NHS.”