Repeat or new prescription online, without an appointment

Repeat or new: what the online prescription covers

A repeat is a continuation of treatment that is already running: the same active substance, the same strength, the same dosage, in a person whose condition is stable and whose monitoring is up to date. Typical examples are a long-standing blood pressure medicine, a statin, thyroid replacement, an inhaler for well-controlled asthma or a proton pump inhibitor. It is the simplest case, because the medical question has already been answered once, but it is not a condition of using the service.

A new prescription is possible too. You can name a medicine you have never taken, or describe what is wrong and leave the choice to the doctor, for a problem or a diagnosis that can be assessed from a written questionnaire. The doctor needs clear grounds in your answers. He may ask for records, test results or a recent reading such as your blood pressure, may advise you to be seen in person, and may decline. For some medicines a first prescription depends on an examination or on test results, and in that case he asks for them or refers you to a doctor who can see you.

What matters is that the request says honestly which of the two it is. A new symptom, a first prescription, a dose increase or a new infection is not a repeat, even if you have taken the same medicine before, and the doctor assesses it as a new decision. A new infection in particular is its own episode: you describe your symptoms and the doctor decides whether an antibiotic is appropriate at all, rather than repeating a course you had last time. Renewing on paper what has not been reviewed clinically is the failure mode this whole model has to avoid.

What information you need to have ready

For a medicine you already take, six things carry almost every request: the active substance rather than only a brand name, the strength, the pharmaceutical form, how you actually take it, how long you have been on it, and who prescribed it last. Add the date and result of any monitoring the medicine requires, along with a list of everything else you take, prescribed or not, including anything bought over the counter.

For a new medicine, the problem itself is the centre of the questionnaire: what it is, when it started, how it has changed, what you have already tried, and whether a doctor has diagnosed it. Name the medicine you are asking about if you have one in mind, or leave the choice to the doctor. The list of everything else you take matters just as much here, because a new medicine has to fit with the ones you are already on.

In either case the fastest way to supply the detail is a photograph of your most recent prescription or of the dispensing label on the box, plus a photograph of any recent test result or letter. Also state allergies, whether you are pregnant, trying to conceive or breastfeeding, and any change since you were last seen: new diagnoses, hospital admissions, new medicines started elsewhere. A questionnaire answered in three words is the single most common reason an assessment stalls, and a stalled assessment costs you time rather than saving it.

Which medicines we can prescribe this way and which we cannot

Ordinary medicines for common problems are the core of it: antihypertensives, statins, levothyroxine, metformin, inhalers, proton pump inhibitors and allergy medicines, whether you are continuing them or the doctor judges on what you describe that starting one is appropriate. Contraception has its own assessment, for starting or continuing the pill, the patch or the vaginal ring, and weight management medicines such as Mounjaro, Wegovy and Saxenda go through the weight management assessment rather than this one.

Some groups are outside the route entirely and no questionnaire changes that. Opioid painkillers, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs for sleep, stimulants, gabapentinoids such as pregabalin and gabapentin, and medical cannabis are not prescribed by MEDINOW. Article 11(6) of Directive 2011/24/EU allows member states to keep narcotic and psychotropic medicines out of the cross-border prescription route, and Irish rules keep controlled drugs out of it as well. We also do not assess antidepressants or other psychiatric medicines online at the moment, not even as a continuation of treatment a prescriber has already established. Separately, a medicine that is not authorised in Ireland cannot be dispensed by an Irish pharmacy whatever the prescription says, so the document is written using the international non-proprietary name in a strength and form available here.

When the doctor asks for more, or says no

Whether you are continuing a medicine or starting one, the doctor asks for more, or declines, whenever the safety of the prescription depends on something the questionnaire cannot supply. For a repeat, that usually means out-of-date monitoring, new symptoms, a dose that has been changing, a medicine that requires physical examination or a test before each cycle of prescribing, or a long gap since anybody has looked at the treatment as a whole. For a new medicine, it means answers that do not give clear grounds for it, a problem that needs examining before anyone can name it, or a medicine whose first prescription depends on tests you have not had.

Common requests include kidney function and electrolytes for ACE inhibitors, ARBs and diuretics, thyroid function for levothyroxine, blood pressure readings for antihypertensives, liver and lipid results for statins, and blood pressure and migraine history for combined hormonal contraception. Age changes some of these thresholds, and so does pregnancy. A refusal in these situations is not the service being awkward; it is the point at which prescribing without new information stops being safe, and the correct next step is your GP rather than a different website.

How the prescription reaches you and what to bring to the pharmacy

The prescription is issued as a PDF carrying the fields set out in the Annex to Directive 2012/52/EU, including your name and date of birth, the date, the prescriber's name, qualification, work address with the country, an email address and a telephone number with an international dialling code, a handwritten signature, and the medicine by international non-proprietary name with strength, form, quantity and dosage. It is sent to the email address you gave us.

You then go to a pharmacy of your choice with the document and photo identification, because the pharmacist has to match you to the name on it. There is no PIN code and no national patient number in this route. Many pharmacists prefer a printed copy, so print it before you go. The Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland publishes guidance for pharmacists on prescriptions from EU and EEA prescribers, but it obliges nobody: the pharmacist keeps professional judgement and may decline. We do not name or link any particular pharmacy.

What it costs, and when the fee is refunded

The online prescription assessment costs 19.90 euro, whether you are continuing a medicine or asking about a new one. That is a single charge for the medical assessment, with no subscription, and the price of the medicine is set by the dispensing pharmacy and is separate.

The fee covers the medical assessment itself, not the issuing of a document. If the doctor declines on medical or legal grounds, the fee is refunded. If the doctor asks you for documentation, you have at least 7 days to provide it and we will remind you before the deadline; if the consultation cannot be completed, we refund the full amount. We do not publish a turnaround time, because it depends on the doctor's queue and on whether the history is complete, and a number we could not stand over would be worse than no number. If you are continuing a medicine, start the assessment while you still have some left.

What we can do and what we cannot

What we can do: assess a written medical questionnaire for a medicine you already take or for a new one, where your answers give the doctor clear grounds; ask you for records, test results or a reading such as your blood pressure where he needs them; and, where treatment is appropriate, issue a cross-border prescription as a PDF by email. The doctor can also decline, advise you to be seen in person, or tell you that a different route suits the problem better.

What we cannot do: act as an emergency service, examine you, or be a way around treatment your own doctor has stopped or refused. We do not issue sick certificates for employers, we do not support Illness Benefit claims, we do not prescribe controlled drugs, and we do not assess antidepressants or other psychiatric medicines online at the moment. There is no video consultation, no phone appointment and no live chat, and if what you need is a conversation with a clinician, this is not the right product.

It is also not a replacement for a GP. Registering with a practice matters for continuity: somebody has to hold the whole record, arrange the blood tests, examine you when something new appears and manage the long-term plan. An online prescription is useful in the gaps around that, not instead of it. If you find yourself using it repeatedly to avoid a review that is overdue, the review is what you actually need.

Who wrote this page

This page was written by the MEDINOW editorial team and reviewed by lek. Damian Wojno, a doctor registered in Poland, PWZ no. 3211301. He is not on the Irish Medical Council register and does not hold an Irish practice address. Reviewed on 29 August 2026.

The page is general information about how a repeat or a new prescription is assessed and what a prescriber needs to see. It is not a diagnosis and does not replace an assessment by your own GP, who holds the record this page keeps referring back to.

How this page was put together: the medicines, categories and rules described here were checked against the sources listed below rather than written from memory, and any figure we could not verify at source was left out instead of estimated. Where Irish practice differs from the rules of another country, the Irish position is the one stated on this page, and the Irish regulators named here are the HPRA for medicines, the HSE for health services, the PSI for pharmacy and the Irish Medical Council for doctors practising in Ireland. Corrections are welcome by email and are made to the page rather than argued about.