Version 3.18 focuses on enhancing safety, supporting urgent care workflows, and ensuring flexibility in medication management—especially in situations where precision and speed are critical.
At Better, we continuously improve Better Meds by listening to clinical teams and understanding your day-to-day challenges. From digitalising urgent mental health documentation to preventing non-administrable prescribing and improving dose calculations, the latest updates reflect our commitment to delivering solutions that support clinicians in the real world.
Digitalising urgent mental health treatment with Section 62 forms
Urgent treatment under Section 62 of the Mental Health Act often relies on paper forms, which can slow down decision-making and reduce accuracy. Better Meds now introduces electronic support for this workflow.
Clinicians can:
- Create a Section 62 form in urgent scenarios when consent or a second opinion cannot be obtained in time.
- Add multiple therapies to the form.
- Fill out all mandatory details such as the responsible clinician’s full name and email address.
- Indicate the reason for urgency directly in the system.
The completed form is saved as a document within Better Meds and includes all relevant details on the certificate of urgent treatment, including approved therapies and rationale.
Improving safety and flexibility with enhanced witnessing options
In many clinical environments, particularly in specialist settings or during staff shortages, mandatory witnessing of medication administration can delay treatment unnecessarily.
With version 3.18, Better Meds now allows for greater flexibility while preserving accountability:
- Users with the “No witness” authority are never required to provide a witness for administrations, even for controlled substances or IVs.
- Users with the “Witness override” authority can override the witnessing requirement when necessary and provide a reason, which is recorded in the audit trail.
- Additionally, users can now mandate witnessing for intramuscular (IM) routes, not just intravenous (IV), to support safer parenteral medication administration.
This enables clinicians to act quickly when needed, while ensuring a transparent and auditable process.
Preventing prescribing errors with mandatory dose rounding
Previously, clinicians could enter a dose that was not administrable—such as a partial capsule—without being forced to correct it. While the system would flag these doses in red, it was still possible to proceed. This created confusion and training difficulties.
Now, organisations can enable mandatory dose rounding in Better Meds. When activated:
- Users must define an administrable dose before proceeding.
- A red warning and tooltip will appear when a non-rounded dose is entered.
- Suggested rounding options are presented for easy adjustment.
This ensures all prescribed doses are clinically appropriate and easily administered—supporting safer, more consistent prescribing.
Smarter total dose calculations for PRN medications
When PRN (as-needed) medications are prescribed with a maximum daily dose, Better Meds calculates the total administered dose over 24 hours. However, inconsistencies could arise when medications contain multiple or clinically equivalent ingredients.
With version 3.18, organisations can now configure ingredient equivalence groups in Meds Config. Ingredients marked as clinically equivalent will be treated as the same during total dose calculations—regardless of how they are prescribed.
This improvement ensures that total PRN doses are accurate and clinically meaningful, helping clinicians stay within safe limits and reducing confusion on the MAR chart.
Built for real-life clinical situations
Every enhancement in version 3.18 was developed with direct input from the field—clinicians, pharmacists, and digital health teams who face complex situations every day. Whether it is enabling fast electronic documentation for urgent mental health care, preventing unsafe prescribing, or ensuring the system adapts to real-world staffing constraints, Better Meds continues to evolve as your reliable partner in delivering safer, more efficient care.
Make sure your organisation stays ahead with medication management that’s built for the realities of care.
