In its next data release, MIMS Australia will be including, for the first time, INN (International Nonproprietary Names) as well as Australian Approved Names (AANs) as part of its push to support a recent Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) project. In 2015, the TGA announced a 4 year plan to harmonise AANs to INNs to facilitate the clear identification and subsequent use of medicines. The overall aim is to promote patient safety by eliminating major differences between AAN and INNs.

MIMS is the largest distributor of medicines information in Australia and plays an important role in implementing initiatives that improve the safe use of medicines.  In their approach to this issue, MIMS has decided to address the most clinically important name changes first and as such, in the July data release, MIMS users will find that adrenaline and noradrenaline medicines will now include their associated INNs, epinephrine and norepinephrine.

Further changes will be rolled out over the next few months. For users of MIMS products, including those from over 80 partners that use MIMS integrated clinical data, they will be able to access these changes as part of their ongoing subscriptions. This means that clinicians using a system that has access to MIMS, will find they have seamless access to these changes.

Finally, a common concern from clinicians is whether changes such as these affect patient histories and medical records.  The approach to implementation taken by MIMS has been designed to ensure that the patient history and searches saved in history will be unaffected by these changes.

June 2016