Victoria has put up $30 million to stop doctor and prescription “shopping”.

The State Government is setting up a real-time monitoring system for health professionals to check patients’ history before prescribing and dispensing medicines.

The project seeks to reduce the number of people dying from prescription drug overdoses, which claim more than 330 Victorian lives each year.

Health Minister Jill Hennessy said it would reduce that disturbing figure.

“Real-time prescription monitoring will help put a system in place that can help us see where people are doctor shopping, or pharmacy shopping, and clearly developing addictive behaviours towards these sorts of medicines,” she said.

“To put up red flags, to deny scripts, and to get people into better sorts of support to deal with an addiction.

“We tend to think we understand what illegal drug addiction looks like. The Victorian Coroner has told successive Governments they need to get this issue out of the shadows.”

Sam Biondo, chief of the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association, said it would be a big help.

“This is a most welcome move, this is something that the community's been waiting for, for many years,” he told ABC reporters.

“We've seen the escalating number of deaths arising from inappropriate pharmaceutical use for quite a number of years now, and it's time that this initiative be established.

“At the moment, we do not have a system where one doctor knows if the doctor down the road has already prescribed a particular medicine.

“More people die from prescription medicine overdoses than in road accidents [in Victoria]. It's a serious, serious issue and we need to shine a light on it.”