Trusted by NHS organisations, healthcare providers, and healthtech innovators, 6B delivers full-lifecycle Altera ePMA integration, from discovery and architecture through development, testing, deployment, and ongoing support. We build secure, scalable integrations for medication safety alerts, pharmacy workflows, medicines reconciliation, prescribing dashboards, barcode administration, and patient engagement.
Our team combines medicines management knowledge with expertise in healthcare APIs, HL7 FHIR, HL7 messaging, dm+d terminology, event-driven integration, identity management, and clinical safety. We help solutions fit established Altera Sunrise workflows while maintaining data integrity, auditability, resilience, and safe clinical decision-making.
Understanding Altera ePMA
Altera’s electronic prescribing and medicines administration functionality forms part of the Sunrise EPR platform. It replaces paper medication charts with digital workflows connecting prescribing, pharmacy review, medicines administration, and discharge.
Medication orders sit within the wider patient record, allowing clinicians to view prescribing information alongside allergies, observations, results, and clinical documentation. Sunrise also supports decision support for issues such as dosing and potential interactions.
The platform can integrate with pharmacy dispensing systems, reducing manual transcription and improving prescription visibility. It also supports closed-loop and barcode medication administration, helping teams verify the patient, medicine, dose, route, and time.
Altera ePMA can be implemented within a wider Sunrise programme or introduced in phases according to local priorities and digital readiness.
Our Altera ePMA Integration Process
We begin with structured discovery involving pharmacy, medical, nursing, digital, technical, and governance stakeholders. Together, we define medicines workflows, users, data requirements, safety constraints, and intended outcomes.
Typical integrations include active medication records, allergy information, medicines reconciliation, pharmacy dispensing, laboratory and observation data, safety alerts, administration tools, and prescribing analytics.
We map patient identifiers, encounters, allergies, medication orders, dose instructions, routes, frequencies, administrations, omissions, discontinuations, pharmacy status, dispensing events, and discharge medicines.
Architecture may use FHIR, REST APIs, HL7 messages, integration engines, secure web services, database interfaces, or event-driven messaging. We also define mappings for dm+d, local catalogues, formularies, dose units, routes, frequencies, medication statuses, and administration outcomes.
Authentication can support OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, single sign-on, service accounts, and role-based access.
Reusable components accelerate delivery, including medication handlers, FHIR components, HL7 parsers, validation rules, and routing pipelines. Secure testing validates patient matching, medication coding, dose instructions, barcode workflows, permissions, sequencing, audit trails, failure recovery, and downtime reconciliation.
Before launch, we coordinate acceptance testing, clinical safety review, deployment, and documentation. After go-live, we monitor performance, resolve issues, and maintain compatibility with Sunrise and NHS changes.
Benefits of Altera ePMA Integration
Prescribers gain connected access to allergies, medicines, observations, results, and decision support at the point of prescribing.
Pharmacists benefit from timely prescription information, reduced rekeying, improved status visibility, and more efficient clinical review and dispensing.
Nurses gain clear schedules, dose instructions, administration records, and omission reasons. Barcode-enabled workflows add electronic checks at administration.
Patients benefit from safer, more coordinated medicines management and smoother transfers between services. Integrated discharge workflows can also reduce pharmacy delays.
Operational teams gain visibility of prescribing, administration, omitted doses, antimicrobial use, pharmacy workload, and medicine expenditure.
For healthtech vendors, Altera ePMA integration provides reusable, standards-based access to established Sunrise environments.
Why Choose 6B for Altera ePMA Integration?
6B designs around the complete medication lifecycle, keeping information accurate, traceable, and clinically meaningful from reconciliation through discharge.
Our specialists understand HL7 FHIR, HL7 v2, APIs, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, integration engines, secure web services, and event-driven messaging.
We manage complex medicines terminology, including dm+d, formularies, dose units, routes, frequencies, medication statuses, allergies, and clinical-to-pharmacy mappings.
Reusable medication handlers, authentication flows, transformation frameworks, validation tools, connectors, and monitoring components accelerate delivery without compromising quality.
Security, governance, and clinical safety are embedded through encryption, role-based access, audit logging, data minimisation, retention controls, and sensitive-information safeguards.
We support DCB0129 and DCB0160 through hazard management, validation, alerting, reconciliation, downtime procedures, and operational controls.
From discovery to maintenance, 6B provides one accountable partner for service resilience and dependable NHS ePMA integration.
Estimate the Cost of Your Altera ePMA Integration Project
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Want to speak to someone today? Call 6B on 0113 350 1290.
Altera ePMA Integration FAQs
What is Altera ePMA?
What is Altera ePMA?
Altera ePMA is the electronic prescribing and medicines administration functionality within the Sunrise EPR platform. It digitises prescribing, pharmacy review, medicines administration, and discharge medication workflows across inpatient and emergency care.
Can Altera ePMA integrate with third-party systems?
Can Altera ePMA integrate with third-party systems?
Yes. Altera ePMA can connect with PAS, pharmacy dispensing, stock-control, clinical decision-support, diagnostics, and reporting systems. Available interfaces depend on the organisation’s Sunrise configuration and surrounding digital architecture.
What information can be exchanged with Altera ePMA?
What information can be exchanged with Altera ePMA?
An integration may exchange patient demographics, admissions, transfers, discharges, allergies, medication orders, administration records, pharmacy requests, prescription statuses, clinical alerts, and discharge medicines.
Can Altera ePMA integrate with pharmacy dispensing systems?
Can Altera ePMA integrate with pharmacy dispensing systems?
Yes. Sunrise has been integrated with third-party pharmacy systems to transfer electronically prescribed medicines for dispensing, reducing manual transcription and its associated risks.
Does Altera ePMA support closed-loop medicines administration?
Does Altera ePMA support closed-loop medicines administration?
Yes. Altera’s Knowledge-Based Medication Administration functionality can use barcode scanning to verify the patient and medicine at the point of administration, supporting checks for the correct patient, medicine, route, time, and dose.
Can Altera ePMA support electronic discharge workflows?
Can Altera ePMA support electronic discharge workflows?
Yes. Prescribed discharge medicines can be made available to pharmacy and transferred into electronic discharge documentation, reducing repeated transcription and helping avoid discharge delays.
How do you keep an Altera ePMA integration clinically safe?
How do you keep an Altera ePMA integration clinically safe?
We use patient-matching controls, medicines and dose validation, role-based access, audit trails, exception handling, reconciliation, downtime procedures, and structured testing. We also support applicable DCB0129 and DCB0160 clinical safety responsibilities.
How long does an Altera ePMA integration take?
How long does an Altera ePMA integration take?
Timescales depend on the interfaces required, medicines mappings, pharmacy workflows, barcode devices, supplier coordination, governance approvals, and testing scope. A focused interface may take several weeks, while a wider medicines integration programme may take several months.
Readiness checklist for Altera ePMA Integration
- Define the medicines workflows and use cases your integration will support, such as prescribing, administration, reconciliation, pharmacy verification, dispensing, barcode administration, or analytics.
- Identify the Sunrise ePMA, EPR, pharmacy, PAS, laboratory, observations, and third-party systems involved in each workflow.
- Confirm which APIs, FHIR resources, HL7 messages, integration-engine connections, database interfaces, or secure transfer methods are available within the target Sunrise deployment.
- Map patient identifiers, encounters, allergies, medication orders, dose instructions, administrations, omissions, discontinuations, dispensing events, and discharge medicines across connected systems.
- Confirm how dm+d identifiers, local medication catalogues, formularies, routes, dose units, frequencies, and medication statuses will be mapped and validated.
- Define which system will act as the source of truth for each data type and how corrections, duplicate records, conflicting updates, and downtime reconciliation will be managed.
- Confirm authentication, authorisation, single sign-on, role-based access, encryption, service-account, and audit-logging requirements.
- Prepare governance and clinical safety documentation, including your lawful basis, DPIA, DSPT position, and applicable DCB0129 or DCB0160 responsibilities.
- Develop a testing plan covering synthetic data, allergy conflicts, duplicate prescriptions, dose changes, omitted administrations, discontinued medicines, barcode exceptions, patient transfers, high volumes, downtime, and clinical user acceptance.
- Agree deployment, training, monitoring, incident management, supplier coordination, configuration change control, upgrades, and ongoing support arrangements before production go-live.
Speak To Our Altera ePMA Integration Experts
Whether you're developing a new digital health product or extending an existing solution with Altera ePMA integration, 6B brings the technical expertise, healthcare insight, and experience needed to accelerate delivery.
