Monthly prescribing activity data
Data for August 2025
Official statistics
- Published
- 11 November 2025 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
About this release
This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) presents data for medicinal items prescribed by NHS prescribers in Scotland and for medicinal items dispensed by NHS Scotland dispensers. Open Data files are available for items prescribed or dispensed in August 2025. An accompanying interactive dashboard is also available.
Further information
Open Data files enable independent analysis of NHS Scotland prescribing data. Information is shown by individual drug. There are three different types of data file available:
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Data by Prescriber location, which contains data for each GP practice, and aggregate data for other prescriber locations. This file contains one month of data at prescriber location level, for August 2025.
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Data by NHS Board of prescribing, which contains data for each NHS Board. There are two files per year covering a) January to June and b) July to December. The most recent file contains data from July to August 2025.
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Data by Dispenser location, which contains data for NHS Scotland dispensers. This file contains one month of data at dispenser location level, for August 2025.
The dashboard
provides the ability to visualise what the highest cost therapeutic areas are in terms of prescriptions in the community and the variation in prescribing within British National Formulary chapters among the 10 biggest practices as per list size, and by NHS Board. It also shows trends in total items and Gross Ingredient Cost over time, at national and NHS Board level.
Open data from this publication is available from the Scottish Health and Social Care open data portal and an interactive dashboard which displays prescribing trends is also available.
The next release of this publication will be 9 December 2025.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact David Scott at phs.prescribing@phs.scot.
Media enquiries
If you have a media enquiry relating to this publication, please contact the Communications and Engagement team.
Requesting other formats and reporting issues
If you require publications or documents in other formats, please email phs.otherformats@phs.scot.
To report any issues with a publication, please email phs.generalpublications@phs.scot.
Older versions of this publication
Versions of this publication released before 16 March 2020 may be found on the Data and Intelligence, Health Protection Scotland or Improving Health websites.