Today NHS England announced it is reviewing the prescribing of medicines which it deems to be “ineffective, unnecessary [and] inappropriate for prescription on the NHS”.

We make no comment here on whether it is a good or a bad idea for the NHS to stop prescribing these items. We are keen that everyone in the NHS should use data better, to help understand who is prescribing what, and below we show how you can use OpenPrescribing to investigate the prescribing of these items in your area.

We have prescribing measures on our GP and CCG dashboards for three of the drugs listed (Omega-3, Tadalafil & Co-Proxamol), and the maps below show the prescribing of some of the items under review:

Liothyronine

Lidocaine Plasters

Tadalafil

Co-Proxamol

Gluten Free Foods

Doxazosin

Omega-3

You can use our analyse page to investigate the prescribing of any drug, and instructions on how to do this can be found here. If you find anything interesting, let us know!