Skip to content Skip to main menu Skip to utility menu

Unity Medication Management update next week – what are the changes

April 6, 2021

Please be aware there will be an essential update in Unity taking place from 11:20pm tonight (Tuesday 6 April), carrying on throughout the night and in to the following morning in order for the Medication catalogue within Unity to be updated to meet the DM+D regulatory requirements.

This work is scheduled to begin at 11.20pm on Tuesday 6 April and should be completed by 5pm on Wednesday 7 April.

This activity will result in full Unity downtime for approximately 4 hours from 11.20pm on Tuesday 6 April until approximately 3.10am on Wednesday 7 April. Medicine management will also be unavailable for approximately 8 hours from Tuesday 6 April from 11.20pm until approximately 7.10am on Wednesday 7 April. Medications will be unable to be prescribed, administered or modified on Unity during this time.

Why is this downtime happening?

The medication catalogue in the EPR is out of date and needs updating. This means newer drugs will be available in the system more frequently.

What do I do if something doesn’t work or appears wrong after the upgrade?

  • If it is not medication related contact IT as usual
  • If it is medication related check with your ward pharmacist/ ward pharmacy technician if available
  • Alternatively contact the EPMA Pharmacy team directly on ext. 3272
  • Non urgent queries can be emailed to PharmEPMABuild (PharmEPMABuild@nhs.net)

What are the main changes I will see when prescribing?

New medication

Clinical decision support should be available for the majority of the medicines catalogue.

Name Changes

Some of the medication names have also changed; this is to help prescribing and interoperability with other systems. The following are examples, however if you cannot find what you are looking for check the brand and generic name in the BNF before contacting pharmacy:

  • Capitalisation; this has been lost for most medication which are not brands e.g. Gentamicin has become gentamicin
  • Tallman has been lost e.g. cefaLEXin will now appear as cefalexin.
  • The new catalogue uses ‘-‘ as a separator for two ingredients, it also adjusts the sequence the active ingredients are listed where the strength comes after the ingredients e.g. Abacavir 600mg / Lamivudine 300mg tablets has become abacavir-lamivudine 600 mg-300 mg oral tablet.
  • The new catalogue will truncate ‘microgram’ to ‘mcg’ if it appears in the drug name, not the order information. E.g. Buprenorphine 200microgram sublingual tablets will now appear as buprenorphine 200 mcg sublingual tablet.

Improved Reconciliation

Initially you may see a “best match” window when reconciling medication that was prescribed before the update. Check this carefully as EPR cannot find an exact match. If in doubt contact your ward pharmacists/pharmacy technician.

For new patients after the catalogue update reconciliation should improve due to better matches and more medication available in the catalogue.

The medication begins with ‘zzz’?

Do NOT use any medication beginning with ‘zzz’ next to possible conversions, they have been removed from the catalogue and will not function correctly.

Click cancel and use the +Add button instead.

Modify/suspend/resume not available when right clicking?

This medication was prescribed before the catalogue update and is no longer available. Cancel/DC and use +Add to search for this again.