Surescripts, a company that was founded by two pharmaceutical associations, and RxHub LLC, owned by three major mail order pharmacies, CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and Medco Health Solution, have announced that they will merge in order to push the concept of electronic-prescribing further on the market.

The two networks consider that the main benefits that are to be drawn from prescribing medication online are the elimination of handwriting mistakes, the possibility that the doctor has at having an instant overview of his patients’ medication history, and the fact that insurance companies can easily monitor their clients’ health condition.

In spite of these benefits, most doctors have shown to be reluctant to the idea of sending prescriptions to pharmacies over the internet. Last year, only 10 percent of the doctors in the US have used these sorts of services, and only about 25 million prescriptions out of more than 1 billion have been sent over the internet. This happened because doctors want to be sure that the prescriptions reach their destination safely, and it seems that until now, no system has been able to guarantee this. However, the merger between Surescripts and RxHub, might be able to offer all the features that will make doctors feel safe.

The new network will be called Surescripts-RxHub and each of the founding companies will have an equal share. The company will be temporarily headed by two persons, the former CEO of Surescripts, Rick Ratliff, and his counterpart from RxHub LLC, J.P. Little.

It seems that the newly formed network will operate as a non profit organization, and that the fees they will ask pharmacies, doctor and insurance companies, will be just enough to keep it going.