Physician-office software vendor Ramp Corp. said Tuesday that it has entered into a partnership with electronic messenger provider SureScripts. The goal: To help make the electronic prescription process more efficient on the back end.

Under the pact, Ramp's HealthRamp subsidiary will provide the hundreds of physicians who use HealthRamp's CarePoint software with the ability to utilize SureScripts' Messenger Services, which allow the electronic transfer of prescription information from doctors' offices directly into pharmacies' systems.

CarePoint lets doctors use PCs and handhelds to prescribe drugs and lab tests for patients, eliminating mistakes caused by illegible handwriting.

But until this pact with SureScripts, most of those "electronic" prescription orders were electronically faxed on the back end to pharmacies, resulting in paper-based orders that were processed by the pharmacies, Ramp CEO Andy Brown says. The SureScripts Messenger Services will eliminate the faxes, he says, as well as end HealthRamp's need to constantly update its list of fax numbers for the nation's 55,000 pharmacies