Patients
At present, repeated medicine stock queries can be time-consuming and difficult for patients when medicine is unavailable.
Discovery stage project
COMMUNITY MEDICINE AVAILABILITY
Better medicine availability data for healthcare.
SP Medicines Data is investigating an independent data layer that could connect community pharmacy stock systems with authorised healthcare software.
1
Community Pharmacy Systems
Existing PMR and stock information
2
SP Medicines Data
Normalised, time-stamped availability data
3
Authorised Healthcare Software
GP, prescribing and NHS-facing systems
The problem
Finding medicine should not depend on repeated phone calls.
When prescribed medicines are unavailable, patients may contact several pharmacies, pharmacy teams spend time answering stock enquiries, and GP practices can become involved when patients cannot fill prescriptions.
Pharmacies
Pharmacy teams may spend significant time responding to repeated availability enquiries.
Primary care
GP practices can become more involved in prescription decisions when a prescribed medicine cannot be found quickly.
How it could work
Use the stock information pharmacies already hold. We do not want pharmacies maintaining another manual stock list.
Illustrative pharmacy record
No live pharmacy data
- Medicine
- Example medicine 20 mg
- Form
- Tablet
- Pack
- 28
- Availability
- Available
- Updated
- 4 minutes ago
Pharmacy authorises
A participating pharmacy could authorise approved access through its existing PMR or stock system where technically supported.
Availability is normalised
SP Medicines Data could convert supported pharmacy system information into a consistent medicine availability format.
Healthcare systems query
Authorised healthcare software could check time-stamped availability for a prescribed medicine and location.
Illustrative example · No live data
Medicine availability result
Medicine: Example medicine 20 mg tablets
Pharmacy
Availability
Updated
Pharmacy A
Available
Updated 3 minutes ago
Pharmacy B
Low availability
Updated 9 minutes ago
Pharmacy C
Unavailable
Updated 5 minutes ago
What version one would show
- Medicine
- Strength
- Formulation
- Pack
- Location
- Availability
- Last updated
What it would not do
- Diagnose
- Prescribe
- Recommend alternative medicines
- Determine dosage
- Determine clinical suitability
- Alter prescriptions
- Dispense medication
- Reserve stock
- Guarantee continued availability
Why automation matters
The key difference is that SP Medicines Data is intended to obtain availability from existing pharmacy systems, rather than asking pharmacy teams to maintain another manual stock list.
Manual model
- Pharmacy staff update another stock list
- Information can become stale
- Creates extra work
SP Medicines Data concept
- Existing PMR data
- Automatic updates where supported
- Normalised availability feed
- Minimal additional pharmacy administration
We are testing the fundamentals before building.
PMR access
Can participating pharmacies authorise automatic access to sufficiently current stock information?
Stock accuracy
Does electronic stock represent medicine that could actually be supplied?
Healthcare value
Would prescribers and primary-care teams use this information in real workflows?
Pilot feasibility
Can a small pilot accurately measure availability, false positives and time saved?
How we keep quality
We are in discovery
No live integrations, no NHS contract and no live pilot yet. We are only sharing what is currently investigated and proposed.
For pharmacies
We are testing whether this could reduce stock enquiries without creating extra workflow burden.
For healthcare software
We are testing whether prescribers and primary care teams can use the proposed feed in real workflows.
We are currently looking to speak with community pharmacies, PMR suppliers and primary-care teams to validate the technical and operational model.
Speak to us about discovery