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Please note: This guidance has been superseded by the Implementation guide for digitial medicines, which contains up-to-date information.

Dispensing system acts as the FHIR server, with a persisted copy Shared Record architecture


api-architecture-disp-is-fhir-server


(1) The prescibing system creates the MedicationRequest with a valid externally referencable identifer and POSTs to the dispending system which adds the logical id on receipt. The MedicationRequest is only shared once ready for pharmacy processing so the status will only deal with valid end-states.

(2) The prescribing system queries the dispending system via a GET using the unique identifer from the MedicationRequest, i.e. "get the dispensing record for this request". The dispensing system assigns the logical id. The GET request may be sent at any time so the dispensing system may choose to expose status values that represent both in-progress and end-states for the MedicationDispense record.

(3) The prescibing system POSTs records to the shared record system. These are likely to be as MedicationStatements, which could reference the source data from MedicationRequest and MedicationDispense records. Alternatively MedicationRequest and MedicationDispense records could be shared which the shared record system amalgamates and exposes as MedicationStatements for other consuming systems.

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