UNICOM
UNICOM is about improved patient safety and better healthcare for all
This European Commission supported Innovation Action focuses on the implementation of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) suite of IDMP (IDentification of Medicinal and pharmaceutical Products) standards
openMedicine
The aim of the openMedicine project was “to reach a global consensus in order to univocally identify and describe a medicine, resulting in the delivery of the appropriate medicinal product to a patient at the retail or community pharmacy level in line with national regulations”. This involved identifying:
- a common data model for prescribed medicines; and
- a common vocabulary for unambiguous definition, description, and identification of medicines.
It was found that, “across the EU, differences in names of medicinal products and active substances, variations in strength and box size prevail, and the availability of a specific medicinal product varies considerably across member states. This situation necessitates substitution of the prescribed product at the point of dispensation in many instances if a patient is to be timely served in a pharmacy”. The EU-wide implementation of ISO IDMP standards, as under way by EMA for pharmacovigilance, is a route to mitigate many of these problems.
UNICOM
To follow, UNICOM is concerned with:
- the implementation of the IDMP standards in Member States drug databases (including linkage to the EMA Medicinal Products/Pharmacovigilance data base) in support of improved patient safety; and,
- the cross-border mobility of European patients by facilitating ePrescribing, supporting safer Dispensations across borders and communication of medicinal products related information through Patient Summary and other clinical documents.
Local context
In Irish terms, this could result in an improved data from our NCA (the HPRA) database into the IPU Product File which is a medicinal product catalogue used is pharmacies nationally. The HPRA database would have a direct link into the EMA database.
We will participate in a number of work packages e.g. one on data dictionaries and another on ePrescribing (because of our own local implementation).
