Do you read the information leaflet enclosed with your medication before you discard the packaging?
If you don’t (and chances are you don’t) then a new lens for Unity lets you access online copies of these leaflets, along with additional information on your medicine’s characteristics.
You can search by drug name (e.g. Fluoxetine), product/brand name (e.g. Prozac), or company name (e.g. GlaxoSmithKline Ltd)
Results, which are intended for UK and ROI users, are divided into two categories:
- Top: Summary of Product Characteristics
- Bottom: Patient Information Leaflets
Unless you’re a health-care professional (or deeply interested learning more about your medication) you can ignore the top results.
Scopes
Depending on your location the lens will serve up data from either Medicines.ie or emc.medicines.org.uk. A filter is available should you wish to swap between sources.
The developer says of these:
“Both of these are not-for-profit representative bodies of the pharmaceutical industry in Ireland and the UK and the websites are considered as reliable sources of medicines information by health-care professionals.”
How to Install Unity Medicines Lens in Ubuntu 12.04
Installing is done in the usual fashion. Use these commands in a terminal:
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:markjtully/ppa
- sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install unity-lens-medicines
After installation has completed you will need to log out of your desktop session and back in before the Lens appears in the Unity Dash.