OpenPrescribing Newsletter October 25
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📣 The Bennett Institute Medicines Symposium is fast approaching
Bennett Institute Medicines Symposium 10th-11th December 2025
Join colleagues from across healthcare research, policy, and practice to share knowledge and learn about the use of UK medicines data. Full details in our blog here.
Bennett Prize in OpenPrescribing - entries close 10th November
Submit your entry for our initiative celebrating the most creative and impactful ways people are using OpenPrescribing. See our blog for full details.
Updates to OpenPrescribing Hospitals
Sharable analyses now available
You can now share direct links to your own analyses and measures on OpenPrescribing Hospitals.
The following link leads directly to the analysis shown in the image:
https://hospitals.openprescribing.net/analyse/?vtms=783692006&quantity=scmd&mode=national
It shows the use of andexanet alfa nationally in NHS hospital trusts in England.
Any selections you make within our analyse or measure pages - such as chart type, organisations, or medicines of interest - can now be saved and shared using the new ‘Share Measure’ and ‘Share analysis’ buttons. You can also bookmark the links in your browser to quickly revisit them as new data is added (see more on our alert emails below).
This makes it easier to share and discuss findings with colleagues (and do let us know if you find anything interesting) and to track changes over time.
Read more in our blog.
Email alerts now available!
We’ve launched OpenPrescribing Hospitals email alerts. These new alerts will allow us to send you timely notifications of new hospital data and also notify you of new OpenPrescribing Hospital features. You can read more in our blog or sign up here.
Improved analyse tool
A quick reminder about our new and improved Analyse page. Following your feedback, we’ve added several powerful features, including the ability to:
- View data at ICB, regional, and national levels
- Identify which trusts use the most of a given product using summary tables below all charts
- Analyse multiple products at once
Check out our blog to read more about the analyse page.
New measures
SGLT-2s
With the recent launch of generic dapagliflozin products and the resulting price drop we’ve created a new measure in both OpenPrescribing and OpenPrescribing Hospitals looking at the proportion of SGLT-2 inhibitor prescriptions which are not for generic dapagliflozin. Generic dapagliflozin is likely to have cost-saving opportunities when compared with other SGLT-2s. Read more in this blog.
Discontinuation of insulin detemir products
Novo Nordisk has announced plans to discontinue all Levemir® (insulin detemir) products, with supply expected to run out by December 2026. In response, we’ve launched new measures on OpenPrescribing and OpenPrescribing Hospitals to help organisations identify their current use of insulin detemir and track progress in switching patients to alternative basal insulins. Read more in this blog.
If you have ideas for new measures or feedback on existing ones, please get in touch at bennett@phc.ox.ac.uk.
OpenSAFELY News: Expanding beyond COVID
Since the start of the pandemic, the OpenPrescribing team has been building and researching in our powerful OpenSAFELY platform for COVID-19 related research and service monitoring. All the outputs are available on the OpenSAFELY website and our reports website.
The big news is that NHS England has approved expansion of the platform’s capabilities beyond COVID-19 research, enabling approved researchers to study pseudonymised GP data for a wider range of health topics. This pilot is supported by both the BMA and RCGP, and NHS England have emailed practices with all the details. You can read more in the Londonwide LMC update here.