Doing the obvious - dm+d compliance
How Triscribe uses standards to help hospital medicines data communicate with our users
I thought I would bring everyone down from the excitement of the Jubilee holiday. So today, I am going to talk about dm+d compliance.
Before that, a quick reminder about our survey, Triscribe saving you time. We want to hear how Triscribe can make your life, or the lives of others in your team, easier by using data to save you time? Turns out, this links to our subject.
Why have I chosen such a dull technical subject? We track a variety of pharmacy/ medicines focused forums and discussion groups. These groups tell us the medicine related questions real clinicians are asking. We built Triscribe to answer questions like these.
dm+d compliance questions are common. Here are some examples:
“How to build a robust dm+d compliant drug database. What to look out for when building this.”
“More legally required standardization for Digital Medicines”
“dm+d more unlicensed friendly”
“Regulation of FDB as already noticed some known high risk medication interactions not flagged either as ‘significant’ or appear at all!”
Since these questions matter to clinicians, they matter to us. Luckily, we have built Triscribe so that it helps provide some answers.
dm+d basics
Start with some basics, dm+d or Dictionary of Medicines & Devices is a WHO maintained international standard for classifying drugs. Its now accepted as the standard for the UK. The easiest (and free) way to access everything to do with dm+d is through the NHS Business Services Administration.
As a result, lots of hospitals and other organisations aim for dm+d compliant systems. Triscribe is a great way to help achieve that.
I could tell you this is due to great insight and forward thinking. Actually, its just doing the basics. We are pretty naïve here at Triscribe and we don’t have any legacy clinical background. When we started building our product, dm+d seemed like an obvious place to begin.
The benefits of doing the obvious things
Why was this “obvious” to a bunch of accountants and software engineers?
Why not? There is a global standard out there, accepted and used by the NHS. Its perfect for our first market and allows global reach if we get the opportunity.
We needed a standard. We knew customers would ask us to use data from different systems. In order to make sure our users can compare apples with apples, we had to construct a database with a unique, standardised way of classifying medicines.
dm+d is free to use, easy to download in a simple modern format.
Its also updated every week. That might sound difficult to a non-technical ear. For software engineers like ours, its ideal. The governing authority has to do this systematically. Systematic means we can automate the download and update our analytics and AI. That makes sure our product is always using the latest version.
dm+d, when used fully, is ultra powerful.
“Data isn’t oil - its sand.” Benedict Evans.
Global standards drill in the desert and allow your data to talk. Triscribe aims to help pharmacists, nurses and doctors hear what medicines data has to say.
You could substitute many other standards for dm+d and these same principles would still apply.
For example, we already use the unit of measurement element of SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicines - Clinical Terms) for dosage information. It means we show the correct doses. It provides the standard units we need to calculate days of therapy (DOTs) and defined daily doses (DDDs). We use these standards in our AI for medicines shortages.
Benefits of building on clinical standards
There is a whole architecture of standards out there. Combined with actual data about real patients, it provides an incredibly powerful communications tool. Triscribe focuses on medicines data, but we built our software to be extensible across all kinds of data. Using standards to provide the right foundations and language. That provides three benefits for our customers:
1. Triscribe data can link to many other sources of data through an API. It talks the same language as any other well-structured dataset.
2. Standards provide communication across boundaries. We can combine and compare data from different systems. Our analytics and AI can communicate across teams, hospitals and other parts of the health and social care system.
3. Standards are also essential to track compliance. You can easily use Triscribe as an audit tool to monitor compliance with regulations, policies, and guidelines.
Interested in finding out how Triscribe can help you become dm+d compliant? Already using dm+d and want to unlock more value? Get in touch to find out more kenny@triscribe.net