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Pharmacy & lab

Formulary (Drug Master)

In short

The hospital's approved list of medicines — each with its generic name, strength, form and pack — against which prescribing and stock are recorded.

Category
Pharmacy & lab

A formulary, held in software as the drug master, is the list of medicines a hospital stocks and prescribes from. Each entry fixes the generic name, brand where relevant, strength, dosage form and pack size, so that the same medicine is recorded the same way by every prescriber and every pharmacist. A real hospital pharmacy runs to somewhere between three hundred and eight hundred lines.

Why it matters in a hospital

Without a formulary, the same drug is entered a dozen different ways, and nothing downstream aggregates: consumption cannot be measured, stock cannot be reconciled, and a prescriber cannot be warned about something they were never recorded as prescribing. It also carries a safety function — generic-name prescribing, which Indian practice increasingly expects, is only enforceable if the master holds the generic name in the first place. Building it is the long pole in setting up a hospital system, and it is worth doing properly once rather than growing it ad hoc, because every shortcut taken here shows up later as a reconciliation that will not balance.

How Trisvio handles it

Trisvio keeps a drug master that prescribing, dispensing and stock all read from, so a medicine means the same thing in the consulting room, at the counter and in the stock report. Prescriptions can draw from stock on hand first, and a medicine the hospital does not carry can still be written as a custom line rather than forcing a false match against the master.

In Trisvio

See how Trisvio supports this in practice.

Related

Related terms