Hello,
Is it possible to request for medications content from MIMS to be made available on the ATHENA website? The data source we shall be working with contains drug ingredients that are encoded to MIMS.
Regards,
Vimala
I am not familiar with MIMS. We were planning to bring in NEHTA as the official Australian drug repository. Is that not a good idea?
Hello Christian,
NEHTA is the organisation that produces the Australian Medicines Terminology(AMT). There is a mapping file available between MIMS and AMT. So that should be fine. By the way NEHTA will cease to exist as of June 30, 2016. It shall be replaced by the Australian Digital Health Agency.
When is the expected timeframe for availability of AMT in the vocabulary set?
Regards,
Vimala
You are totally right. It’s AMT.
Is AMT going to live? Where do you get the mapping table from? What is MIMS?
Hello Christian,
Yes AMT will survive, along with SNOMED CT-AU. The two terminologies are now supplied in a single download file.
The mapping table is obtained from MIMS. This excerpt is directly out from the MIMS website:
“MIMS Australia has been publishing medicines information since 1963. The acronym, MIMS, was derived from the original publication which was called Monthly Index of Medical Specialties.”
Regards,
Vimala
Hello Christian,
The source data that I shall be working with has all medications encoded using MIMS. I have been unable to obtain a copy of the map linking MIMS codes to those in WHO ATC. What approach would you recommend to perform the mapping from a local drug dictionary to one that is available in the OMOP vocabularies?
Regards,
Vimala
Can you get a listing for each MIMS drug what’s in it? Ingredients, their strengths, dose form, brand name, package size, supplier? In reasonably high quality?
Hello Christian,
From what I have seen so far, we can obtain ingredients, strengths, dose form, vendor and quantity. Once I get a copy of the source data containing medication information, I shall be able to answer your questions with a greater degree of surety. How would the listing help though?
Regards,
Vimala
If the list is good quality we can do an automatic mapping, which will also create new RxNorm Extension concepts for the products not sold anywhere else, and build all the necessary links. But we have seen a wide variety of quality in these datasets. What’s screwed up the most is the listing of multiple ingredients and their strengths.
Is MIMS a public standard, or poprietary?
Hello Christian,
MIMS is a proprietary drug dictionary. I expect to see a high level of quality in the MIMS listing. I shall let you know as soon as I get a copy of source data containing the medications information.
Regards,
Vimala
Any news on the MIMS front?
We are right now trying to get AMT into the system. Do you know it? Can we ask you for help digging through the details?
Hello Christian,
No news on the MIMS front as yet, except for the fact that MIMS are unable
to provide us a mapping file.
Yes I do know AMT quite well. And yes , I can help you out.
Regards,
Vimala
Hi, Vimala.
My team is currently working on AMT standardization. We have a problem with drug_strength definition.
The thing is that we can’t find correspondence between Refset table der2_ccsRefset_StrengthFull_AU1000036_20160930.txt and any other Terminology table.
May you please help us with the drug strength definition?
Hello Dmytry,
The following excerpt is from the documentation from the Australian Digital Health Agency as how various reference sets have been developed. It might shed some light on your question:
Seems to me that the Drug Strength reference set is a new addition. I have since left the organisation that produces AMT, the Australian Digital Health Agency (formerly NEHTA). However since you have already obtained the release file for AMT, you do have the right to seek support from the terminology team. Please email them at help@digitalhealth.gov.au asking for the details on how the drug strengths were derived. From memory, I believe it was through internal consultation with drug experts.
Please let me know how you fare.
Regards,
Vimala
Thanks, Vimala
We’ve e-mailed NEHTA support team and we got a clarification.
Another question:
Now we are working on some source data and we want to find out if there is any relation between our data and MIMS. Here are several examples of concept_code - concept name pairs
FCC_code = ‘76145’, name = ‘AMISULPRIDE SANDOZ TABLET 100MG’
FCC_code = ‘76520’, name = ‘TRYZAN CAPS 5 CAPSULE 5MG’
FCC_code = ‘45203’, name = ‘BISACODYL SUPPOSITORY 10MG’
May you please search such codes or drug products in the MIMS database? Maybe data we have turn up
MIMS data.
Another idea is:
Can you help us with the access to MIMS database (online or downloadable database)?
Hello Dmytry,
Glad you received clarification from NEHTA. Unfortunately I am unable to help you out with searching through the MIMS database, as the staff at MIMS are unwilling to help me out. I was trying to obtain the MIMS to AMT map. Your best approach would be to contact NEHTA once again requesting clarification on the concept_code and concept_name pairs, as they have a copy of the map.
Regards,
Vimala
Thanks, Vimala.
Hello Dmytry,
How long do you foresee it would take to incorporate AMT into the OMOP vocabularies?
Regards,
Vimala
Hi, Vimala,
So sorry, somehow missed this message. So from the beginning of 2017 AMT is there. (seems you know this already:))