The Otago District Health Board has been paying $75,000 a year for maintenance on software it has not been using since 2004 following a failed pilot project for electronic prescribing.
Board staff hope to gain approval for a second national "e-prescribing" pilot project, which has potential to reduce prescription medication errors.
Regional chief information officer Grant Taylor told this week's hospital advisory committee meeting if Otago was selected as the pilot site, the national Quality Improvement Committee would fully fund the $660,000 pilot.
Gaining the funding would be a "massive opportunity", but if the pilot did not go ahead, the board should ditch the maintenance on the software, he said.
The maintenance allowed the board to hold the licence for the software, entitled it to the latest versions and gave service support, Mr Taylor said after the meeting.
Several Australian hospitals were successfully using the system, he said.
The Ministry of Health wants to improve medication safety, and estimates medication errors cost the country $38 million a year.
An agenda report said every district health board had problems such as hand-written prescriptions being illegible, inaccurate or incomplete.
Mr Taylor said he believed Otago was the only district health board with an electronic solution to such issues.
Committee chairman Richard Thomson said he was nervous the board could end up having to pay some costs of the pilot if it went ahead.
Mr Taylor said he had told the Quality Improvement Committee the board could only be involved if the committee funded "the whole lot".
"This is quite a competitive thing. There are other district health boards interested in taking this pilot and the money that comes with it."
An agenda report said the previous e-prescribing pilot in 2004 had grown too rapidly, as the benefits became apparent to clinicians, and it should have been kept confined to the initial limited set of patients.
Other reasons for the failed pilot included "electronic signatures" not being accepted on prescriptions at the time, which had resulted in duplication of electronic and paper records.
If the second pilot went ahead, the director-general of health had given dispensation to allow electronic signatures.
The board committee recommended the national pilot should go ahead if accepted by the Quality Improvement Committee, on the proviso the pilot was fully funded.
