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.

Use Case: Supply of Medication

Primary Care / Community Supply

Applicable for the following use cases;

  • Primary Care, Community Care and Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) medication requests to community pharmacy (aka an FP10 in England or GP10 in Scotland).
  • 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.
Note: For implementations within England using the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS), refer to the specific implementation guidance below;

NHS England Electronic Prescription Service FHIR API

Secondary Care

Applicable for the following use cases;

  • Inpatient medication requests, for a named patient, to be dispensed by the hospital pharmacy and intended for administration on a hospital ward.
  • Inpatient medication requests, for a named patient, to be dispensed by an Automated Dispensing Cabinet 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.

Applicable FHIR resources: MedicationRequest and MedicationDispense

use-cases

The use of FHIR resources for these use cases is identical except for the following;

  • Care setting identified by the MedicationRequest.category.
  • The quantity of discharge medication to supply may be defined within a MedicationRequest.dispenseRequest.

Integration with Automated Dispensing Cabinets (ADC)

This section is currently in DRAFT as is a topic under discussion with the Digital Medicines Community of Interest group.

The draft diagram below shows where we see ADCs fitting in with other relevant Trust systems for medicines interoperability.

draft-inpatient-meds-diagram

Each integration point will be discussed with the Community of Interest for the use of the HL7 FHIR standard to support data sharing between these systems.

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