Ontario's AIMS requirement, and a module that costs nothing
Every Ontario pharmacy needs an incident management platform by January 1, 2027.
The Ontario College of Pharmacists' AIMS Program changes take effect on January 1, 2027: by that date all pharmacies must have selected and onboarded to their chosen medication incident reporting platform. Pharmacies choose their own platform, provided it can contribute to ISMP Canada's National Incident Data Repository, and the College covers the cost of submitting that data. The supplemental Standard of Practice takes effect the same day, adding unique logins for registered staff at their primary practice site, a safety self-assessment every two years, and quarterly continuous-quality-improvement meetings. After choosing a platform, the Designated Manager signs ISMP Canada's Data Sharing Agreement naming it.
AIMS medication-incident module — in development for the January 1, 2027 requirement.
NarcCount is building a full AIMS incident-management module: incident and near-miss recording, causal-factor analysis, CQI plans and quarterly meeting records, safety self-assessment tracking, and daily de-identified submission to ISMP Canada's National Incident Data Repository.
NarcCount is not yet able to submit data to the NIDR. Submission requires a Data Submission Protocol Agreement with ISMP Canada and successful API testing, neither of which is complete. Until then, NarcCount cannot be used to meet the NIDR submission requirement of OCP's AIMS Program. The Ontario College of Pharmacists does not approve or endorse incident management platforms.
Source: OCP — Timelines for changes to the AIMS Program (last updated November 3, 2025) — read 2026-09-06.
The AIMS module is free. Not free for a year — free.
Every Ontario pharmacy has to put an incident management platform in place, and the rest of the market charges for one. NarcCount charges nothing for it, with no end date, no per-user fee and no card at sign-up. There is no cut-down free tier either: anonymous reporting, the incident register, causal-factor analysis, CQI meetings and actions, safety self-assessment tracking and unique staff logins are the whole module, and the whole module is what is free.
What NarcCount sells is the other half of the product: narcotic and controlled-substance reconciliation — importing your purchase, dispensing and destruction records, computing expected on-hand, and producing the count documentation an inspector asks for. That is the paid subscription, and it is entirely optional. A pharmacy that only ever uses the AIMS module is a pharmacy we are happy to have, and never pays us anything.
We would rather be the platform your team already has an account on when you come to look at narcotic reconciliation. That is the entire commercial reason, and it is the only one.
Try the fifteen fields right now
A worksheet with all fifteen mandatory fields on one screen. Fill it in, print the record, or copy it and paste it into whichever platform your pharmacy has selected. Nothing you type leaves your browser, and it is not a reporting platform — it records nothing and submits nothing to the National Incident Data Repository.
Four things a pharmacy has to be able to do
Report, Document, Analyze, Share. The left column is the College’s own wording. The right is what NarcCount does about it.
Report
Anonymously record medication incidents and near misses soon after they occur into a medication incident reporting platform that (a) complies with OCP's criteria for reporting platforms and (b) contributes data to ISMP's National Incident Data Repository to support shared learning and to help identify systemic issues.
One screen, sixteen questions, and an anonymous submission that carries no identity at all — not the reporter's name, not their user id, nothing a platform administrator could look up later. Anonymity here is a property of the database write, not a checkbox we promise to honour.
Document
Document required and relevant details of medication incidents and near misses in a timely manner. Document CQI plans, outcomes of staff communications about medication events, and subsequent quality improvement initiatives or changes implemented.
All fifteen of the College's mandatory fields are captured on the report itself, and the CQI side records the plan, who owns it, when it is due and how the outcome will be measured. An action with no measure is a good intention, and an assessor can tell the difference.
Analyze
Analyze incidents and near misses for causal factors soon after they occur and implement appropriate steps to minimize the likelihood of recurrence. Analyze individual and aggregate data to inform quality improvement initiatives. Develop CQI plans and measure the outcomes of changes implemented. Complete a safety self-assessment every two years.
Causal-factor analysis is a reviewer's job, so it sits on the review screen rather than on the reporter's path — the report stays anonymous, the analysis is fully attributed. The analysis page answers where errors happen and which factors keep recurring, and the self-assessment record tracks the two-year cadence.
Share
Communicate relevant details of a medication incident or near miss promptly to all pharmacy staff, including causal factors and actions taken. Schedule CQI meetings with pharmacy staff at least once every quarter. Share successful interventions, changes, or best practices that have helped reduce risk.
The quarterly meeting record captures attendance, decisions, and the date and method the outcomes were shared with staff — which is the half nobody can evidence at an assessment, so it is a field rather than an afterthought.
Source: OCP — Supplemental Standard of Practice: Mandatory Standardized AIMS Program in Ontario Pharmacies (approved December 8, 2025) — read 2026-09-08.
The requirements in full, including the fifteen mandatory fields →
Built to be used at 6pm on a busy Friday
A safety system that nobody fills in produces the opposite of safety. Under-reporting is the failure this program exists to prevent, so the reporting form is the part we spent the design effort on.
One screen, 16 questions
The College mandates 15 data fields. NarcCount asks 16 questions, on one screen, most of them answered by tapping rather than typing — finishable on a phone before the next prescription lands. Two of the College's fields are analysis rather than observation, so they sit on the reviewer's screen, where the Standard puts them.
Anonymous means anonymous
An anonymous report is written through a session that carries no identity at all, so there is nothing to look up afterwards — not by a manager, not by a platform administrator, not by us. That is a property of how the record is written, not a policy we promise to keep.
No patient identifiers, by design
There is no field for a patient's name, address, phone, email or date of birth, because none exists in the schema. Age band and gender are what the College asks for, and they are two taps. Free text is checked for identifiers as it is typed.
The CQI half, not just the form
Quarterly meeting records with attendance, decisions, and the date and method they were shared with staff. Corrective and preventative actions with an owner, a due date and an outcome measure. Safety self-assessment cadence tracked and reminded.
Unique logins for your whole team
Invited by email, with no per-user fee — which matters, because a per-user fee is exactly the incentive that produces the shared logins this requirement exists to stop.
Your records, exportable
Print a single incident, or export the register to CSV. Nothing about the free module holds your own history hostage.
The same login also reconciles your narcotics
NarcCount started as narcotic and controlled-substance reconciliation, and that is still the paid product: import your purchase, dispensing and destruction records, have expected on-hand computed per drug, get variances flagged and ranked, and print the count documentation an inspector asks for. Ontario expects a reconciliation at least every six months; most pharmacies still do that arithmetic by hand.
It is the same account, the same team and the same audit trail as the AIMS module. Nothing about the AIMS module changes if you never buy it.
Start with the checklist
The College publishes a checklist for Designated Managers with eight items on it and a deadline against each. We have reproduced it in full, with an honest note beside every line about whether NarcCount does anything for it — including the two where the answer is that it does not.
Already have a NarcCount account? Sign in and open the AIMS module →
NarcCount supports your AIMS obligations; it does not replace your professional judgment or your pharmacy’s regulatory responsibilities. The requirement described on this page is the Ontario College of Pharmacists — AIMS Program changes, and every quotation links to the document it came from.