A new National Medicine Record of what patients have been prescribed and dispensed will be mandatory for all doctors to use, including those in online-only clinics, Minister for Health and Ageing Mark Butler says..

In the meantime, the government will force telehealth clinics to upload prescribing and dispensing information to My Health Record, including the clinical context.

“Ensuring this information is accessible to a patient’s usual GP and other healthcare providers will support safer clinical decision-making, reduce the risk of medicine-related harm and strengthen trust across the healthcare system,” Mr Butler said on Wednesday.

He said the changes followed a campaign by Queenslander Alison Collins, whose daughter Erin died in August at the age of 24 after overdosing on psychiatric medicines prescribed through different websites.