Supporting Safer Dispensing Through IT
25 July 2006
IT is critical to the successful implementation of new healthcare services across the UK, as defined in the new contracts and in the electronic prescription service.
While the specific services vary across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the same principle holds true: IT is vital in saving pharmacists time and enabling them to operate successfully in the new world of service delivery and electronic scripts.
All community pharmacists need to ensure that they update their IT systems so that they can deliver these new services. People who do this earlier rather than later will be at a huge advantage, and early familiarity will boost staff confidence and ensure the pharmacy is prepared for the move to a totally paperless system in the future.
AAH has developed its LINKEvolution system to provide all of the new services already defined in the English and Scottish contracts.
LINK also provides pharmacists with access to databases and systems which support safer prescribing and dispensing.
Clinical decision support LINKEvolution provides direct access to the Multilex Drug Data File (previously known as Philex) from First DataBank Europe (FDBE).
Multilex is the UK's leading drug knowledge base, and includes over 50,000 pharmaceutical products, including POMs, OTCs, appliances, homeopathic remedies and other NHS prescribable products. It enables safer prescribing and dispensing and improved patient care through effective clinical decision support.
Multilex is fully integrated into AAH's LINK system, enabling pharmacists to make the following patient-specific checks when using LINK: drug-drug interactions, allergy or sensitivity alerts, contraindications, drug doubling, precautions and warnings.
Multilex is particularly useful to pharmacists carrying out a Medicines Use Review using LINK's electronic MUR form. Because it is accessed as a stand-alone Windows browser, it enables the pharmacists to check drug information while using LINK's MUR form, and to view both sets of information simultaneously.
It also includes commercial information such as pack size and Drug Tariff information, helping the pharmacist to make cost effective decisions.
The Dictionary of Medicines and Devices A key element in the new pharmacy IT systems is the successful implementation of the Dictionary of Medicines and Devices, or dm+d.
Developed to improve patient safety, dm+d delivers a single coding system plus a text description for all medicines and devices used in the treatment or diagnosis of patients.
As community pharmacists become more involved in prescribing and the management of ailments, they will need to access and update patient information and medication histories. Hence the dm+d will become increasingly important in reducing medication errors and transcription errors by providing clear, unambiguous, timely information.
LINK utilises the information in dm+d as part of its ETP programme, ensuring that pharmacists already have access to this identification system. The latest version of Multilex is also integrated with dm+d.
dm+d will become particularly important in the future when it becomes the NHS standard for medicines and device information, enabling diverse clinical systems to exchange information safely and reliably. It will also improve the efficiency of prescription reimbursement.
A single solution with LINK AAH developed its LINKEvolution IT system from scratch to ensure that it not only provides recording ability but is also compliant with all the key NHS systems. It include intervention notes and an MUR wizard, as well as supporting ETP and e-MAS.
LINK is also designed to be futureproof, so that new services can be added as these are specified.
For pharmacies installing LINK or updating older LINK systems, AAH also manages all aspects of the process, including the connection with the national secure network N3 and providing any necessary hardware and software. This leaves pharmacists free to concentrate on their patients.
"We are committed to making our pharmacy IT systems simple and intuitive, so pharmacists can spend their time talking to their patients and not worrying about how to use their computer system," said Steve Dunn, group managing director of AAH.
"By working closely with the IT specifiers in the four home countries, we have ensured our system provides everything that pharmacists will need, now and in the foreseeable future."
dm+d The dm+d combines information previously held in four separate databases: the UK clinical product reference source (UKCPRS), the primary care drug dictionary (PCDD), the secondary care drug dictionary (SCDD) and the medical device dictionary (MDD). It is also integrated with the Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), the standard clinical terminology for health information IT systems. The data in dm+d is supplied by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), Prescription Pricing Division (PPD), and is updated weekly.
