Implementation guide for digital medicines

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

Prescribing and Dispensing systems act as FHIR servers

The most simple architecture for interoperability between a single prescribing system and single dispensing system.


(1) The prescribing system creates the MedicationRequest with a valid externally referencable identifer and POSTs to the dipensing system which adds the logical id on receipt. The MedicationRequest is triggered when the MedicationRequest.status = active.

(2) The dispensing system creates the MedicationDispense with a valid externally referencable identifer and POSTs to the prescribing system which adds the logical id on receipt. The MedicationDispense is triggered when the MedicationDispense.status = completed.

(3) On receipt, the prescribing system can set the MedicationRequest.status = completed.

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