ePMA Implementation Guidance for FHIR STU3

This guidance is under active development by NHS Digital and content may be added or updated on a regular basis.
Please note: This guidance has been superseded by the Implementation guide for digitial medicines, which contains up-to-date information.

Background

What is a MedicationStatement?

A MedicationStatement (despite the potentially confusing name) is not a statement in the traditional sense of a list of items (such as bank statement), and in FHIR R5 it is going to be renamed to MedicationUsage.

The definition of a MedicationStatement from hl7.org is as follows:

A record of a medication that is being consumed by a patient. A MedicationStatement may indicate that the patient may be taking the medication now, or has taken the medication in the past or will be taking the medication in the future.

A MedicationStatement resource will contain a single line-item of medication, and may contain information from the original MedicationRequest, MedicationDispense or MedicationAdministration if the system populating the resource knows about them.

It is possible; however, to create the resource without this information.

Example

In the diagram below there are three active medications, one completed medication, and a stopped medication.

Note that all of medications are derived from a MedicationStatement - each with varying data-sources.

patient-meds-statement-zoomed


Potential data-sources for the MedicationStatement resource

  • Pharmacy System - MedicationRequest
  • Dispensing System - MedicationDispense
  • Patient self-declared - MedicationAdministration
  • ICS Shared Record - MedicationStatement

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