Medicines, prescribing and pharmacy
At a glance
Medicines information is safe only when its meaning and state are unambiguous. Prescription, medication, allergy, dispensing, administration, service-event and reconciliation information are related but not interchangeable.
Return to the Out-of-PHC row or Into-PHC row.
Scope and boundaries
This family covers prescription and medication information sent by PHC, and medicine, vaccination, consultation or commissioned-service information returned by a pharmacy. Name the exact service, event and authoritative source.
This wiki does not yet maintain a complete medicines, prescribing or controlled-drug regulatory set. Validate the specialist regime for the actual prescribing, dispensing, administration or commissioned service rather than inferring it from this page.
Out of primary healthcare
PHC may send a prescription, current medication and allergy information, or a purpose-specific review or reconciliation request. The workflow must distinguish intended prescription state from historical medication and show amendments, cancellation, substitutions and recipient action.
Into primary healthcare
PHC may receive a dispensing or service event, vaccination, medicine change, consultation outcome or reconciliation information. Someone must determine whether and how it updates the clinical record, resolves discrepancies and triggers patient follow-up.
DAPB4008 applies only to its scoped community-pharmacy-to-GP flows and available service transports. It is not a universal standard for all pharmacy information. CLM-018
How the requirement layers apply
| Layer | Workflow-specific position |
|---|---|
| Legislation | UK GDPR and DPA 2018, necessity and accuracy apply. The Section 251B duty is conditional on the sender, flow and statutory tests. |
| Regulations and contract | Apply the exact prescribing, dispensing, medicines, controlled-drug, vaccination or commissioned-service regime. The absence of a universal row here is not evidence that no specialist rule applies. |
| Standards | dm+d is the principal coded medicines/device terminology where scoped. NHS Number, SNOMED CT, UK Core FHIR, DCB0129, DCB0160 and DSPT may apply. DAPB4008 is a scoped incoming community-pharmacy standard. |
| Confidentiality and other controls | Apply common-law confidentiality, Caldicott, authoritative-source and state rules, allergy and interaction context, substitutions, cancellation, dispensing, reconciliation, correction, audit and clinical-safety evidence. |
Minimum, conditional and higher assurance
- Required floor: correct patient, medicine or product, dose/form where relevant, event and status, source, date/time, purpose, authority and clinical owner.
- Conditional envelope: disclose only medicine and context needed for the current service; do not make unrelated history available by default.
- Higher-assurance ceiling: coded medicines and events with explicit status, reliable change/cancellation semantics, provenance, reconciliation, discrepancy feedback and monitored clinical-safety controls.
Failure states and ownership
Test stale medication lists, duplicate or replacement prescriptions, cancellation after dispensing, substitutions, allergy discrepancies, incorrect units or formulation, delayed service-event messages, failed reconciliation, incorrect record updates and ambiguity about which system is authoritative.
Evidence and open checks
Maintained evidence: SRC-006, SRC-007, SRC-016, SRC-017, SRC-018, SRC-019, SRC-020, SRC-024, SRC-040. Validate the exact specialist gateway and service specification through VAL-010.
Continue to Assess and record this workflow.