Where to start as a digital medicines supplier

As a digital medicines supplier, there are different challenges that your system could support. For example:

• query for current medication
• medications on admission
• medications on discharge
• supply of medication
• hospital transfer

Compliance with the interoperability standard is based around these standards: 

• HL7 FHIR R4 UK Core
• NHS Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d) - dm+d is crucial to sharing medicines information safely and easily. By providing standard codes and descriptions for medicines in use in the UK, dm+d gives NHS organisations a common vocabulary to use when recording and sharing medicines information.
• SNOMED-CT - SNOMED CT gives clinical IT systems a single shared language, which makes exchanging information between systems easier, safer and more accurate. It contains all the clinical terms needed for the whole NHS, from procedures and symptoms through to clinical measurements, diagnoses and medications.
• Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM) - UCUM is a code system intended to include all units of measures being contemporarily used in international science, engineering and business.

Refer to the published implementation guidance for how these standards should be used to support the above five use cases. 

The following use cases are out of scope within the DAPB4013 standard:

• Supply of medication for community dispensing – see Electronic Prescription Service
• Non-patient specific data (note - FHIR resources are patient-specific)
• Pharmacy stock control processes
• Data sent to medicines devices that does not contain patient identifiable information
• Medicines data currently shared via non-electronic processes.

Refer to the standard for more information.

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