8. Action Plan: National Medicines Utilisation Unit ( NMUU)
A key role for NMUU is the development of systems to collect and collate information on antimicrobial prescribing, particularly within hospitals. The UK lags behind much of Europe in being able to access these hospital data, and in Scotland this represents the major outstanding task within the 2002 Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy and Scottish Action Plan1.
The National Medicines Utilisation Unit (National Services Scotland) supports the collection and dissemination of information on the use of medicines across NHS Scotland, including support for the development of a national hospital medicines utilisation database. The Steering Group fully supports this initiative and believes that NMUU should work closely with the Scottish Medicines Consortium and Health Protection Scotland to:
- report the usage of agreed key antimicrobials in target groups across NHS Boards
- evaluate the current information gaps (including antimicrobials prescribed privately, in prisons and supplied directly by dentists) and review the systems and resources necessary to enable appropriate capture of prescribing activity
- establish agreed standardised national units of measurement and performance indicators for antimicrobial utilisation in conjunction with NHS Quality Improvement Scotland and HPS
- inform the future development of electronic prescribing and how this will ensure provision of data on antimicrobial use, including linking of antimicrobial usage data to infection diagnoses
- work with HPS and SMC in linking data on antimicrobial resistance to antimicrobial prescribing.
It is appreciated that the NMUU may require additional resources to undertake this work.