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Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUHFT) is to pilot a system for compliance with the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD).
The pilot, due to begin in early 2018, will involve pharmacists and pharmacy technicians testing OPTEL Group’s Certa system — a combination of software and hardware that allows 2D barcodes to be read, so that medicines can be verified and decommissioned.
Bernard Naughton, a researcher at OUHFT’s pharmacy department and a PhD student at Keele University’s Institute of Science and Technology in Medicine, and Bhulesh Vader, clinical director of pharmacy and medicines management at OUHFT, are leading on the project.
“This pilot will look at a solution, including a ‘checkout’-type scanner with a touchscreen and verification/decommissioning functionalities, which aims to provide a more ergonomically efficient approa
The new study follows a previous pilot undertaken at the same trust, in which a medicines authentication function was built into existing patient medication records (PMR) software. The previous study tested the detection rate of counterfeit, recalled and expired medicines, as well as user compliance. The new pilot, Naughton and Vader said, will focus more on the user experience and ways to improve the Certa product.
“Legislations [like FMD] represent a turning point in the healthcare industry, and this project can help evaluate user adoption and determine best practices for compliance in real-world scenarios” said Korina Fischer, vice-president of healthcare at OPTEL Group. “We are extremely pleased and honoured that Oxford University Hospitals, one of the best research hospitals in the world, chose to collaborate with OPTEL, and we look forward to working with them on this.”
In November 2017 NHS Improvement released “Frequently Asked Questions — Secondary care services and the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD)”, which outlined how the directive was expected to impact across secondary care.
