Version: 1.0.2 | Published: 1 Dec 2025 | Updated: 2 days ago

Medicine and Allergy/Intolerance Data Transfer

Dataset

Summary

Type:
Information standards
Effective From:
01 October 2021
Applies To:
  • All NHS care locations that:
  • need to know a patient’s current medicines and allergies/intolerance
  • prescribe, dispense or administer medicines
  • use computer systems that could send or receive this information
  • This includes acute, ambulance, community, mental health, specialist trusts, GP practices and community pharmacies
Impacts On:
Implementation of this information standard impacts all health IT systems suppliers providing systems to the above providers; suppliers should work with their customers to determine necessary changes.
Conformance Date:
31 March 2023
Topics:
  • Dispensing
  • Messaging
  • Pharmacy, Medicines and Prescribing
Care Settings:
  • Ambulance (Urgent and Emergency Care)
  • Community health
  • GP / Primary care
  • Hospital
  • Mental health
  • Pharmacy

Documentation

Description:

NHS Digital Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and specifications provide the definitions, including:

  • how the send and receive messages are constructed
  • how the data within is structured so that it is machinereadable.

The purpose is to ensure that medication and allergy and/or intolerance data is transferred between systems and locations in a machine-readable format. This will be achieved by:

  • transferring medication information using the newest UK version of FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources)
  • the usage of dose syntax to transfer the amount of medication per dose as a simple coded quantity
  • transferring allergy/intolerance information using SNOMED CT and dm+d codes.

Note that it is not assumed that all in-scope locations will implement the standard by 31 March 2023; there will be leeway for those organisations which need to procure and install a suitable IT system.

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