Summary

The Digital Medicines initiative aims to positively transform the way that patients manage their medicines, promote new models of care as well and improve the medicines supply chain and the provision of medicines data. At a high-level, this all involves the adoption of digital prescriptions to replace inefficient and cumbersome paper versions, utilising appropriate technologies to fully engage in the end-to-end patient pathway, alongside supporting the adoption of technology to deliver a fully digitised medicines supply chain. 

The Digital Medicines Specification utilises the Generic FHIR Receiver and supports the following care communications as part of its MVP:

• Pharmacy Immunisation Administration – A FHIR Document used to notify a patient’s registered GP Practice on the administration of immunisations to a Patient at a Pharmacy.
• Pharmacy Emergency Medication Supply – A FHIR Document used to notify a patient’s registered GP Practice of emergency medication(s) supplied to a Patient at a Pharmacy.

Documentation

The latest version of Digital Medicines specifications can be accessed here: https://developer.nhs.uk/apis/digitalmedicines-alpha/index.html. The first stage of the standard is now published and details the information that should be recorded for vaccinations administered and emergency medicines supplied by community pharmacists.

The MVP states that suppliers are expected to process the unstructured messages upon entry to the framework in order to compliantly implement any use cases. However, there will be a future requirement for suppliers to further enhance their solutions to ensure the messages are processed in a structured format.

Enhanced Pharmacy Immunisation Administration and Emergency Medication Supply use cases are currently being developed and will be available from March 2019.