PRODUCTS

The Multilex Drug Data File (Multilex DDF) supports medication management across healthcare through a drug terminology containing medication concepts appropriate to the varied needs of different healthcare settings.

For more information on Multilex DDF's drug terminology, please click on the following links:

Medication coverage

Primary care

Secondary care

Navigation and selection

Safety features

Links to other drug codes

Medication coverage
Multilex DDF’s drug terminology offers comprehensive medication coverage including:

• all POM, P and GSL licensed primary and secondary care products and packs
• many unlicensed products
• licensed herbal products
• homoeopathics.

Medical devices, nutritional supplements and ingredients for extemporaneous preparations are added in line with regional drug tariff publications. Additional products are considered for addition on request from our customers and users.

Primary care
Medication concepts to support generic prescribing are available while the products that should be prescribed ‘by brand’ are flagged as such. A pick list to include the marketed brands and manufactured generic products and packs, together with their flavour, colour and ‘sugar free’ status as appropriate, is available to support dispensing doctors and pharmacists.

Secondary care
Product Set, Multilex DDF functionality developed specifically for secondary care, allows users to build a customised prescription using Drug Name, Routes (including their licensing status) and, where applicable, Base Formulations and Strength, while our ‘orderable medication’ acts as a stepping stone to navigate to a number of pre-built order sentences, enabling rapid, intuitive prescribing in the fewest possible steps. Appropriate products for administration and dispensing are provided, further streamlining the medications management process.

Navigation and selection
All medication pick lists can be navigated to using search terms or via the BNF chapter. Results can be filtered by market status, product type (e.g. drug or appliance), medication type (e.g. homoeopathic) or healthcare profession (e.g. nurse or dentist). The user can be made aware of any products that are under CHM (black triangle) surveillance or carry an NPSA high risk warning e.g. oral methotrexate once weekly dosing.

Safety features
A number of safety features are available including:

• products identified by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) as high risk
• black triangle products (Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) surveillance)
• use of TALLMAN lettering to help to reduce selection confusion by visually distinguishing between products that have similar names.

Links to other drug codes
Multilex DDF’s drug terminology is linked to a wide range of standard drug terminologies including Read 2, Clinical Terms Version 3, the NHS Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d) and regional drug terminologies such as the Irish Pharmaceutical Union codes, the eVADIS codes within the GPASS system in Scotland and the Medusa drug codes used in pharmacy systems in Wales as well as certain proprietary drug terminologies. The Multilex DDF drug terminology is also linked to EAN and PIP codes to support stock control and the supply chain.