Implementation guide for interoperable medicines

This guidance is under active development by NHS England and content may be added or updated on a regular basis.

Introduction

This guidance contains information for the use of medicines-related content within the UK Core standard.

The FHIR standard is used as part of interoperability solutions, sharing medicines data between clinical systems and between integrated and shared record systems across the UK health sector.

Note: You can navigate between the different sections of this guide using the menu located at the top of each page.

Use Cases

This guidance is applicable for the following use cases. Each is described in more detail within the Medication Data Use Cases page within the Design section.

  • Inpatient medication requests, for a named patient, to be dispensed by the hospital pharmacy and intended for administration on a hospital ward.
  • Medication requests, for a named patient who is on short-term leave from an inpatient stay (but is not discharged), to be dispensed by the hospital pharmacy and intended for administration at home.
  • Discharge medication requests, for a named patient, to be dispensed by the hospital pharmacy and issued on discharge for administration at home.
  • Outpatient medication requests, for a named patient, to be dispensed by the hospital pharmacy and intended for administration in the Outpatients department, Accident and Emergency department, or Day unit.
  • Outpatient medication requests, for a named patient, to be dispensed by the hospital pharmacy for administration at home.
  • Medicines reconciliation on hospital admission and discharge, obtaining and updating current medication with a shared medication record system.
  • Internal hospital transfer (to a ward using a different ePMA system).
  • Hospital transfer to another hospital (using a different ePMA system).

Which can all be supported by the implementation of Shared Medication Records.

Out of scope for this version
  • Orders for the supply of ward stock medications.
  • Medication requests between two Trusts where there is a local shortage of supply.
  • Recording of medicines administration events using the FHIR MedicationAdministration resource.

Refer to the NHS England Electronic Prescription Service FHIR API specification for the use cases of:

  • Primary Care, Community Care and Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) medication requests to community pharmacy (aka an FP10).
  • Outpatient medication requests to be dispensed by a Community Pharmacy (aka an FP10HNC).
  • Outpatient medication requests to a contracted Outpatient pharmacy.
  • Outpatient medication requests to a Homecare medicines provider.

The above specification is NOT APPLICABLE to Scotland or Northern Ireland.

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