Request

Please provide results to these questions for both (i) 2022, (ii) 2023 and (iii) 2024. If you can’t provide results for all of 2024 then please just provide me with the data for 2024 you can release but state how much of 2024 is covered by the release.

In relation to the following two drugs, (a) Semaglutide and (b) Tirzepatide, please state:

1. What were the total number of prescriptions that were issued for each drug, and how many of these were private prescriptions.

2. In relation to these prescriptions how many patients did this represent and if possible state how many were NHS patients, how many were private patients and how many were a mixture of the two.

3. For each year and each drug provide a separate table showing the number of patients prescribed the drug divided by men and women and also ten year age bands, so 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39 etc.

For the avoidance to doubt Q.1, Q.2 and Q.3 should be answered separately for each year and separately for each of the two drugs.

NOTE: Please could you provide the response as an attachment to the e-mail rather than in the body of the e-mail as the way it can get formatted on WhatDoTheyKnow can make a table of figures very difficult to interpret.

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 17 January 2025.

We clarified this request on 21 January 2025 with the below:

Therefore, I would be grateful if you would help us with the following:

Please can you confirm whether you would like us to: aggregate the data by Semaglutide and Tirzepatide as chemical substances, would you like this to be broken down by Product (for example Ozempic/ Wegovy) or by the individual presentations available - (for example, Wegovy Flex Touch 0.5mg/0.37 ml inj 1.5ml pre-filled pens)?

Would you like us to include:

• prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed anywhere in the UK? • prescribed in the UK and dispensed in England? or • prescriptions prescribed and dispensed in England only?

Please also note that we hold no data on private prescribing for these chemical substances, either for items or patient counts. We hold data for private prescribing relating to Controlled Drug substances under Schedules 2 and 3 only - there are no Semaglutide or Tirzepatide presentations that meet that criteria.

You responded with the following on 21 January 2025:

Could you just provide me with the information broken down by the product name but NOT by the presentation, and could the data also be for prescriptions prescribed in England and dispensed anywhere in the UK.

Response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA hold the information you have requested and a copy of the information is attached.

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

We do not capture the clinical reason why a drug has been prescribed. This means we cannot attribute this data to a specific condition.

NHS Business Services Authority NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors, pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors and personal administration, 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 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: The data is for the calendar years 2022 and 2023, and up 2024 (11 months). The latest data held is up to November 2024.

Tirzepatide prescribing 2022: There were zero items recorded for Tirzepatide prescribing in 2022.

Organisation data: The data is for items prescribed in England, regardless of where dispensed, in the community.

Data: This dataset is limited to the prescribing of products within the British National Formulary (BNF) chemical substances of Semaglutide (BNF 0601023AW) and Tirzepatide (BNF 0601023AZ). It shows the number of items and unique identified patients at BNF chemical substance level and additionally at BNF product level, split by age band and gender.

BNF code: The 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. Most of these items are dressings and appliances which NHS Prescription Services has classified into four pseudo BNF chapters (20 to 23).

Items: This shows the number of times a product appears on a prescription form not the quantity prescribed.

Patient information: This is 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 (NHS number) was only available for 99.04% of prescription items. The patient count figures are based on a distinct count of NHS number as captured from the prescription image. Patient ages are based on the age as captured from the prescription image and relates to the patient's age at the time of prescribing. The results are for all patients aged between 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-99, 100-109 years of age, and for those patients where the age is unknown. 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 calendar years and age bands.

Gender: Patient gender has been reported using the latest patient gender information held by our Information Services data warehouse at the time that the data was extracted. This uses information from either the most recent Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) message or from the last time that we received data about the patient's gender from NHS Personal Demographics Service.

Private Prescribing: Please note that we do not hold data on private prescribing for these chemical substances, either for items or patient counts. We hold data for private prescribing relating to controlled drug substances under Schedules 2 and 3 only - there are no Semaglutide or Tirzepatide presentations that meet this criteria.

Publishing this response

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

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-02521

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data, please email 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 2025” 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.