About UMI

Background

When we started the MUR (Medicines Use Review) Online project over 2 years ago, we planned to write a software that actually works! An MUR software that is user friendly with extra bells and whistles which should make delivery of MUR a breeze. We planned to call the software sysMUR. This plan presupposes that the MUR softwares in place in a number of pharmacies are not fit for purpose. In the early days of MUR, this is absolutely true but a number of providers have revamped their MUR software and are more user friendly and easier to use. However, MUR Online still finds that there are pockets of softwares in community pharmacies which are still not fit for purpose.


Strategic Shift

Instead of writing a software from scatch, we are proposing a unified MUR interface (UMI) which we will call sysMUR. Why? Community pharmacies have suffered over the years from lack of IT system uniformity. The pace of implementation of software changes is determined by the speed of the system provider to respond to change not by the need of the pharmacist or the pharmacy business. As an example, some softwares were still churning out the old MUR form templates way after it was invalidated. Moreover, the community pharmacy workforce is very mobile and the challenge of learning how to use a new IT system remains a vivid barrier. MUR Online believes that MUR is integral to what we do as community pharmacists and set a framework for structured interaction between community pharmacists and their customers. An IT system that facilitates that effectively is very desirable. We however understand that it currently difficult to near impossible to achieve a unified community pharmacy computer system. There are systemic and physical barriers that will have to be overcome for this to happen.

On that basis we are suspending our plan to write a software for a campaign for a UMI. We need your help. We want you to tell us what is great about your current system and what is not so great about it. We will use this information to map out a UMI which you can all vote on. If enough of us back this strategy, we may be able to influence the look and feel of the next generation of MUR softwares. We have set up a blog to capture your response: http://sysmur.blogspot.com/

Message to Software Providers

To software providers, we understand you own the technical connectivity to the PMR (Patient Medication Record). We are not too concerned about how you implement this. All we are asking is keep an eye on what we are doing and as the UMI develops, you can adopt it in your respective softwares. After all a useful system will incorporate the views and opinions of its users. A broad adoption of the UMI is what we are looking for.

Kazeem Olalekan
Project Manager