Thank you for your request for information about the following: 

Request 

You asked us: 

By month how many women are currently being prescribed testosterone in the UK

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 29 April 2024.

We asked for clarification of your request on 2 May 2024 with the following:

What do you specifically require in regards to the BNF?

https://applications.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/infosystems/welcome

The current BNF version can be found via the ISP and is linked above (login as guest), if you are unfamiliar with the BNF structure. Testosterone drugs are under BNF sub-paragraph 0604020K0. However, there are numerous other sub-paragraphs linked to testosterone, such as testosterone enantate BNF sub-paragraph 0604020M0. We would require clarification on this in order to proceed with this request.

It would also be helpful to know which of the below options you would want to be included in terms of where the items have been prescribed and dispensed;

Prescribed anywhere in the UK, dispensed in England. We can indicate the prescribing country if required?

Prescribed in England, dispensed anywhere in the UK. We can indicate the dispensing country if required?

Prescribed in England and dispensed in England only.

In terms of time frame, we require clarification on this. If what you require is patient counts by gender by month for Testosterone prescribing, this can be done from ePACT2 and we have data available from April 2015. May we ask for clarification on what time frame you would require when aggregating monthly, if this is what you require from your request?

You responded with the below on 29 May 2024:

I am looking specifically at all transdermal testosterone preparations. Prescribed in England and dispensed anywhere - time frame of 2 years, working back from most recent month available - broken down by month.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000.  

Our response

I can confirm that the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information and notes explaining it is attached. 

Please read the below notes to ensure correct understanding of the data. 

Number of unique identified female patients prescribed a transdermal presentation of the chemical substance testosterone (BNF 0604020K0) in England.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors and personal administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to dispensing doctors and personal administration). This involves processing over one billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) users

Data Source: ePACT2

Data in ePACT2 is sourced from the NHSBSA Data Warehouse and is derived from products prescribed on prescriptions and dispensed in the Community. The data captured from prescription processing is used to calculate reimbursement and remuneration. It includes items prescribed in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey and Isle of Man which have been dispensed in the community in England. English prescribing that has been dispensed in Wales, Scotland, Guernsey / Alderney, Jersey and Isle of Man is also included.

The Data excludes:

• Items not dispensed, disallowed and those returned to the contractor for further clarification.

• Prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in prisons, hospitals and private prescriptions.

• Items prescribed, but not presented for dispensing or not submitted to NHS Prescription Services by the dispenser.

Time Period: Monthly data from April 2022 to March 2024

Organisation Data: The data is for prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed in the community.

Data: This dataset is limited to the prescribing of transdermal presentations of the chemical substance testosterone (BNF 0604020K0).

BNF Code: The British National Formulary (BNF) Code is a 15-digit code in which the first seven digits are allocated according to the categories in the BNF and the last eight digits represent the medicinal product, form, strength and the link to the generic equivalent product. NHS Prescription Services has created pseudo BNF chapters, which are not published, for items not included in BNF chapters 1 to 15. The majority of such items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).

Patient Identification: Where patient identifiable figures have been reported they are based on the information captured during the prescription processing activities. Please note, patient details cannot be captured from every prescription form and based on the criteria used for this analysis, patient information was captured for 98.80% of prescription items.

The patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image. The figures for the number of identifiable patients should not be combined and reported at any other level than provided as this may result in the double counting of patients. For example, a single patient could appear in the results for multiple time periods.

Publishing this response 

Please note that this information will be published on our Freedom of Information (FOI) disclosure log at: 

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-01887  

Your personal details will be removed from the published response. 

Data Queries 

If you have any queries regarding the data provided, or if you plan on publishing, the data please contact: foidata@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented. 

Reusing the data and copyright 

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data, please contact: communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented. 

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at: 

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/  

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement: “ePACT2, NHSBSA Copyright 2024” Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence. 

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.