openEHR-technical Digest, Vol 51, Issue 24

Technical (archive)
1

Dear All,

The international pharmacy stakeholers, in particular EMA, FDA, Canada, Japan, Australia have decided that All medicines units shall be expressed in UCUM according ISO IDMP, in particular
EN ISO 11240, Health informatics — Identification of medicinal products — Data elements and structures for the unique identification and exchange of units of measurement.

Even if you would use some Snomed for this internal in a system you will need to map e.g. for decision support that are defined based on IDMP standards, medicinal product dictionaries that provide the medicinal products and details, ICSR reporting, cross border exchanges, logistics, insurance reimbursements and many more.

Recommendations can only be to adjust to the UCUM, or if you find something awkward to adjust UCUM via the open community.

Met vriendelijke groet / With kind regards,

dr. William T.F. Goossen

directeur Results 4 Care B.V.
De Stinse 15
3823 VM Amersfoort
the Netherlands

telefoon +31654614458

e-mail: wgoossen@results4care.nl
DCMHelpdesk@results4care.eu
skype: williamgoossenmobiel
kamer van koophandel 32133713
http://www.results4care.nl
http://www.results4care.eu
http://results4care.wikispaces.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/company/711047
http://results4care.wikispaces.com/3.+Cursussen+Nederlands

2

William,

I think the question is how they use UCUM. If it’s just a question of expressing ‘5 mg’, that works out of the box. I would imagine that here you are talking about the manufactured dose of one tablet / capsule / etc, i.e. the manufacturer’s point of view (what’s printed on the box).

But do they say how to use UCUM for things like ‘3 x 5mg tablets’ as a dose? I imagine not, since that’s the clinician/physician point of view - where ‘dose’ means what’s given to the patient, not the amount of a drug in a given units of the product …

  • thomas