Step 1 – Deciding if MyDispense is for you

To help you decide if MyDispense is going to be useful for your purposes, you can browse this website and also download our summary document. This is a very brief overview of MyDispense and is also useful for sharing with colleagues who have not heard of MyDispense before. Additionally, there is a very informative webinar, hosted by FIP in July 2020, which explains the use of MyDispense by a number of users around the world.

Trying out MyDispense – access to our test systems

If you would like to know more we can give you access to one of our evaluation systems where you can test drive MyDispense for yourself. We have three test systems, based on dispensing practice in Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA. To get access to a test system please email us at mydispense1@monash.edu.

Please note that the test system is not to be used for students. You can only add students when you have your own MyDispense ‘instance’.

Step 2 – Setting up MyDispense in your school of pharmacy

If you decide to go ahead with MyDispense, send an instance request to us at mydispense1@monash.edu It normally takes about five business days to get a basic instance up and running. We will create an administrator account in your name (or the person you nominate). This administrator will then be able to add other people (staff and students) in your institution. The administrator will allocate roles (instructor, marker or student) to new users. Instructor is the usual role for teaching staff. Instructors are able to edit existing content and add new content. The administrators guide to admin has all of the details for setting up your MyDispense instance.

Your new instance will be for your institution only, no-one outside of your institution will be able access it without your permission. It will come ready loaded with a medications inventory, prescriber and patient databases and also a large number of exercises (cases) that have been created by other educators. The medications inventory is stocked with drugs from your region, so you will have a good resource base to get you started.

The technical bits

Because we host MyDispense for you there is very little technical work for you to do. Our team at Monash University will make sure your server is kept up to date with security patches and other essential updates. There are, however, two tasks that will involve your IT team, these are registering a domain and setting up Single Sign On (SSO).

Setting up a domain

You will need to contact your IT team and ask them to register a domain for your instance. This gives you an address that you can type to access your server (something like mydispense.yourinstituion.edu). We will supply an mydispense.site address for the IT team to link the domain to when we set up the server.

We now supply a mydispense.site address so your IT team can do a ‘CNAME’ record instead of directly pointing to the server using an IP address. This is because our hosting provider may force an IP change because of technical issues. The CNAME will allow us to update the final IP address on our end, reducing downtime in case of technical issues.

Single sign-on (SSO)

SSO is where your staff and students have only one username and password for logging into all of your systems (email, calendar, LMS etc). SSO is preferred because it reduces the data held for every student to only their username. If SSO is not used, then we need to store students’ email addresses as well. MyDispense supports a number of SSO systems. If you wish to integrate MyDispense with your SSO system we will work with your IT/security teams to set this up.

Customising MyDispense

Once you are up and running, Monash will perform customisation work on your instance in order to make it more locally relevant. We will configure the system to conform to local dispensing practice and regulations. In addition, virtual patient and prescriber addresses are modified with local postal/ZIP codes etc.