Why have some names changed?

The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) maintains a terminology for ingredients used in medicines. Over time, some of the ingredient names used in Australia have become inconsistent with internationally-accepted terminology. This can be confusing for Australian consumers who travel internationally, and healthcare professionals who were trained overseas.

What has happened/will be happening?

A range of changes are required over a four-year transition period. Some will be relatively minor spelling updates to both excipient and active ingredient names. Other name changes will have a more-significant impact including:

o      Dual labelling requirements for affected medicinal products.

o      Updating of Consumer Medicine Information (CMI), Product Information (PI), and Product Summary Pracsoft documents.

o      Re-submission of relevant documents and labels for TGA approval.

When will this change occur within Clinical?

MedicalDirector has made relevant changes to its Drug and Allergy listings to assist its users in identifying affected medicinal products. These changes were included with the February 2017 MDref update.

What is changing within Clinical?

The following occurred within Clinical:

o      Patient Allergies/ADRs reference the new terminology.

o      Prescription prompts/alerts reference the new terminology.

o      The Prescribing or Medication lookup routines reference the new terminology.

Examples:

o      Patients who had an Allergy/ADR for “Amoxycillin” prior to the Feb2017 MDref update, now display “Amoxicillin” once the update has been applied.

o      When prescribing “Frusemide Tablet”, the medication will be listed as either of the following. Please note the prescription references the newer terminology of “Furosemide Tablet”.

•       Frusemide (see Furosemide)

•       Furosemide Tablet

Why is there some inconsistency between the names I see in search/browse results, and those displayed within Clinical?

The TGA has provided pharmaceutical manufacturers with a transition period of up to four years to amend all relevant packaging, labels, and documentation. Relevant updates to Clinical will only be applied once they have been made by the associated manufacturer first.

MedicalDirector will always represent the content of manufacturer authored documents as supplied.

Further Reading

For further information regarding this change, please see the following links;

o      https://www.tga.gov.au/updating-medicine-ingredient-names

o      https://www.tga.gov.au/updating-medicine-ingredient-names-list-affected-ingredients