Introduction to the Primary Care Drug Dictionary for NHS in England

The Department of Health initiated a project for the creation of a drug dictionary that could be used as a cornerstone for ETP, the automation of business processes within the PPA and ultimately for use in Primary Care across the NHS in England.

Working with a team of GP, Pharmacy and NHSIA stakeholders co-ordinated by the Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle (SCHIN) the PPA will develop and populate the dictionary by the end of December 2002. This will enable GP and pharmacy system suppliers to integrate it into their systems throughout 2003 in readiness for the introduction of electronic prescriptions into the community from 2004.

The range of products that the dictionary will reference include:

• all drugs which are prescribable and reimbursable within primary care,
• products that are included in Schedule 10 of the NHS (General Medical Services) Regulations,
• appliances and reagents that are listed in the Drug Tariff issued by the NHS for England and Wales.

The above include many of the medicinal products in the PPA Product List and they constitute over 99% of prescribing within primary care. The aim is not to be so exhaustive as to include every possible product and it will be left to editorial policy to decide on the inclusion of rarely issued items.

The completion of the project will support the business processes shown in the figure below:

Drug Dictionary - Process Model

Benefits from the use of a drug dictionary for primary care include:

• common drug data will be used in the prescribing and dispensing processes and in the transfer of prescriptions between GPs, dispensers and the PPA thus decreasing the possibility of error.
• openness in the reimbursement and remuneration process undertaken by the PPA.
• increased automation of the prescription processing processes undertaken by the PPA and a minimisation of manual intervention in those processes.
• a reduction in the number of situations where queries regarding data content are raised relating to prescribing, dispensing and processing.
  

For additional information on this project see www.schin.ncl.ac.uk/DrugDictionary

For information on an associated project for Secondary Care see
www.nhsia.nhs.uk/ukcprs