Victoria will begin tracking opioid and benzodiazepine prescriptions in real time to help combat doctor-shopping, addiction and overdoses.
Health Minister Jill Hennessy says the monitoring system, to be used by prescribing doctors and pharmacists, will be rolled out across the western Victorian primary health network on Monday before extending to the rest of the state from early next year.
The scheme will only monitor medications carrying a high risk of dependency, such as opioids and benzodiazepines.
"It helps us ensure that we're not having those very, very dangerous cocktails of prescription medicines being given out to patients," Ms Hennessy told reporters on Saturday.
"It also helps out pharmacists and doctors potentially intervene at an earlier stage if someone's developing an addiction to prescription medicines."
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In 2017, 417 Victorian deaths were associated with prescription drugs.
Melbourne couple Jill and Roger Cheal lost their 31-year-old daughter, Georgia, to pain medication misuse in 2006 and believe prescription monitoring may have saved her life.
Georgia was injured in a car accident a decade earlier and became addicted to medication used to manage ongoing pain.
"When she died, she died with a toxic mix of medication," Jill Cheal said.
"It shouldn't have been prescribed, but part of the problem was there was a lack communication between the treating doctors.
"So if this prescription monitoring system had been in place, that mightn't have happened."
Only prescribing doctors and pharmacists will be able to access a patient's scripts for high-risk medications and the system will not be linked to the federal government's controversial My Health Record scheme, which is plagued by data privacy concerns.
Addiction medication specialist Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones welcomed the Victorian initiative. A similar scheme exists in Tasmania, but it is voluntary.
"The main problem is not so much that of people doctor-shopping deliberately but, if you like, accidental doctor shopping," Dr Lloyd-Jones said.
"The bigger hit of this process is actually to improve the healthcare to people who are on multiple treatments from multiple doctors, not targeting specifically patients who are deliberately trying to rort the system."
