National therapeutic indicators data visualisation
Data to December 2025
An Official Statistics publication for Scotland
- Published
- 28 April 2026 (Latest release)
- Type
- Statistical report
- Author
- Public Health Scotland
Note
Please note that the figures for 11 indicators have been revised following a data quality exercise. Full details can be found in the 'Change Log' tab of the NTI Shiny app. Alternatively, these can be downloaded as an Excel file in the 'downloads' section of this page.
About this release
This quarterly release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) is an update of the National Therapeutic Indicators (NTIs) for data for prescriptions data for prescriptions prescribed and reimbursed by the NHS up to 31 December 2025. Ensuring quality and effective prescribing is a key priority area for NHS Scotland, delivering improvements to patient safety, person-centred care and cost-effective use of medicines. The NTIs support this work, using prescription data to provide a measure of prescribing activity across NHS boards, Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs), GP clusters and GP practices.
Main points
There are currently 92 primary care prescribing indicators, of which 33 are also presented based on care home residents, for prescribing in the community. In addition, there are 17 secondary care prescribing indicators detailed in the publication, related to hospital prescribing. One of the indicators is selected each quarter to demonstrate the type of data that is available.
The indicator selected for this quarter focuses on the prescribing of inhalers licensed for maintenance and reliever therapy (MART) and anti-inflammatory reliever (AIR) therapy. The main treatment for asthma is inhaled therapy. The collaborative asthma guidelines developed by the British Thoracic Society (BTS), National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) recommend the use of a combination inhaled corticosteroid (ICS)/formoterol inhaler prescribed as AIR or MART for all people newly diagnosed with asthma, as well as for those with poor control or adherence on their existing treatment. AIR and MART inhalers provide both anti-inflammatory treatment and symptom relief within a single inhaler. This approach can simplify treatment, improve asthma control, and reduce the need for separate reliever inhalers.
The chart below shows that the number of inhalers licensed for AIR and/or MART prescribed as a proportion of all ICS and ICS/LABA inhalers prescribed has increased over time, from 32% in October to December 2023 to 43% in October to December 2025. This suggests improved compliance from prescribers with the asthma guidelines.
Background
This is the latest release of the data visualisation and further developments will follow, as prioritised by a steering group for this work which is commissioned by the Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics division of the Scottish Government.
The data visualisation allows a more in-depth and interactive visual analysis of the current NTIs as defined by the Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics Division of the Scottish Government.
The visualisation includes a presentation of variation and prescribing trends, and comparisons of HSCP, GP clusters and practice peer groups. This update also provides a practice level dashboard showing comparisons between indicators, HSCP trends and an NHS board indicator summary. Prescribing trends for hospital prescribing is also presented at NHS board level.
This interactive visualisation allows the user to look at the variation in prescribing practice between GP practices and will be useful to both prescribers, prescribing advisors and other associated prescribing staff who want an 'easy to access' visualisation view of prescribing data.
An accompanying dashboard view displaying NTIs for Respiratory, Diabetes, Mental Health and Chronic Pain alongside already published Admissions, Prevalence and demographics data is also available.
Further information
The next release of this publication will be July 2026.
General enquiries
If you have an enquiry relating to this publication, please contact David Scott at david.scott7@phs.scot.
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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.