THE Federal Health Department, together with professional groups, has developed a counselling tool on ingredient name changes for items listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, with pharmacists urged to invest time explaining the changes when dispensing affected products.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration has updated over 200 active ingredient names used in Australia as part of the International Harmonisation of Ingredient Names (IHIN) reform.
A full list of affected products is available at tga.gov.au.
Most changes relate to simplified mild phonetic spelling changes such as "th" to "t", "y" to "i", "ph" to "f" but where there are less intuitively obvious changes, dual labelling will be required with the old name in brackets after the new name until 2023, the PBS document explains.
All affected medicines must be labelled appropriately from 2020 although adrenaline products will be permanently dual-labelled as Adrenaline (Epinephrine).
The temporary dual-labelling will cease in 2023 with only the new ingredient names being shown on the label.
"The counselling tool provides a handy table of the most common changes that will be seen by consumers and health professionals during 2017," the Department said.
"The tool confirms that while some ingredient names are changing, the actual medicine, brand name (in most cases) and the medicine's effect have not changed."
A copy of the pharmacists' counselling tool is available for download at pbs.gov.au.
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