NHS Primary Care Drug Dictionary

'The introduction of a common NHS drug reference will form the cornerstone of electronic prescribing and dispensing of medicines'

The Department of Health has initiated a project for the creation of a Primary Care Drug Dictionary (PCDD) to introduce for the first time common data descriptions. The PCDD can be used as a cornerstone for:

• Uniformity in describing drugs within the Integrated Care Records Service (ICRS)
  
• the Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions (ETP)
  
• the automation of business processes within the PPA
  
• Uniformity and consistency within the NHS.

Working with a team of GP, Pharmacy and National Health Service Information Authority (NHSIA) stakeholders co-ordinated by the Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle (SCHIN), the PPA has developed and populated the NHS drug dictionary which was released at the end of December 2002. This will enable GP and pharmacy system suppliers to integrate it into their systems to support the unambiguous and consistent description of drugs as part of the integrated care record, and the rollout of electronic prescriptions.

The PCDD is a cornerstone of the UK Standard Clinical Products Reference Source (UKCPRS) project. This was established in response to the strategy document Information for Health, which identified a requirement for a standard clinical products reference source on a national basis, interoperable between the primary, secondary and tertiary health sectors.

The dictionary provides categorical information related to products, not opinion or ‘added value’ information. The range of products that the dictionary references include:

• all drugs which are prescribable and reimbursable within primary care
  
• NHS black listed products
  
• appliances and reagents that are listed in the Drug Tariff issued by the NHS for England and Wales.

The above includes most of the medicinal products in the PPA Product List and they constitute over 99.9% of prescribed and dispensed medicinal products within primary care. The aim is not to be so exhaustive as to include every possible product and it will be left to the DH lead editorial policy to decide on the inclusion of rarely issued items. The editorial board is responsible for definitions of content such as names, forms, routes and syntax.

The Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) coding system is used to identify products in the PCDD in order to link seamlessly with the Secondary Card Drug Dictionary.

Authorised users (e.g. GP and Pharmacy System Suppliers) can download the PCDD from the PPA website www.ppa.org.uk.