This subset describes which path the administered medication or immunization takes to get into the body or into contact with the body; the route of entry or the course the medication or immunization must take to get to its destination. For example, an oral antibiotic may be used to treat a severe infection on a toe; the oral route is used to get the medicine to be able to reach and treat the infection in the toe. Examples: intravenous (IV), subcutaneous (SC), intramuscular (IM). The route of administration of a medicine should only be a description of the path taken and not the form.

This subset is intensionally defined using the set of subtypes of 284009009 | Route of administration value (qualifier value)| and a set of pan-Canadian members. This is a broad data exchange subset that supports interoperability and conformance testing, and can be constrained to meet local use cases.

This resource is an informative value set; a normative subset containing the expanded values can be found on Canada Health Infoway's Terminology Gateway.