8 things a Designated Manager has to do
Review the guidance on expectations during the 2026 transition year.
As soon as possible
Nothing to do with us. Pharmacies must continue to meet the core requirements of the AIMS Program throughout 2026.
Review the AIMS Incident Management Platform Criteria and select a platform of your choice.
As soon as possible
The criteria are reproduced on this site in full, line by line, with an honest answer beside each one.
Complete the Data Sharing Agreement with ISMP Canada after selecting an incident management platform.
As soon as possible
Yours to sign with ISMP Canada. Every pharmacy signs one regardless of platform, and no vendor can sign it for you.
Review the updated requirements that take effect in 2027 — the supplemental Standard of Practice.
As soon as possible
The four pillars are set out on the requirements page, quoted rather than paraphrased.
Implement the incident management platform at your pharmacy.
By January 1, 2027
Sign up, invite your team, and start recording. There is no implementation project and no invoice.
Set up unique logins in your platform for registered pharmacy staff members.
By January 1, 2027
Invite by email from the Team page. No per-user fee, so there is no incentive to share a login — which is the behaviour this requirement exists to stop.
Schedule CQI meetings with pharmacy staff at least once every quarter, and keep a record of meetings held and the attendees.
First meeting by April 1, 2027
The CQI page records the date, who attended, what was decided, and when and how it was shared with staff.
Complete a validated safety self-assessment for the pharmacy, at least once every two years.
At least once every two years
Tracked and reminded, not provided. The two accepted tools are ISMP Canada's MSSA and Think Research's PSSA.
Source: OCP — Checklist for Designated Managers to Meet Updated AIMS Program Requirements (June 2026) — read 2026-09-08.
The two you cannot delegate to any platform
The data sharing agreement with ISMP Canada is signed by the pharmacy, not by the vendor, and every Ontario pharmacy signs one whichever platform it picks. The safety self-assessment is completed with ISMP Canada or Think Research, because a platform is not permitted to validate its own. Any vendor page that implies otherwise is selling you something it cannot deliver.
Every Ontario pharmacy needs an incident management platform by January 1, 2027.
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.
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.