Medication Prescription and Dispense (MPD)
1.0.0-comment-3 - ballot International flag

Medication Prescription and Dispense (MPD), published by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE). This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 1.0.0-comment-3 built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/IHE/pharm-mpd/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

IHE MPD (Medication Prescription and Dispense)

Official URL: https://profiles.ihe.net/PHARM/MPD/ImplementationGuide/ihe.pharm.mpd Version: 1.0.0-comment-3
Active as of 2025-05-08 Computable Name: IHE_PHARM_MPD

Copyright/Legal: IHE http://www.ihe.net/Governance/#Intellectual_Property

The IHE MPD profile defines global data exchange specifications for medication prescription and dispense, in different settings and compatible with different workflows and jurisdictions.

The main goals of this Profile are:

  • Support implementers of Pharmacy systems - simple or complex, local, national or cross-border.
  • Provide common specifications for systems implementing or migrating to FHIR from previous standards, like HL7 v2 or HL7 CDA.
  • Support vendors of software in allowing their software to support all the use cases involving Medication Prescription and Dispense while retaining a simple, modular interoperability framework that is less costly to implement and maintain.

Overview

The MPD Profile describes

  • actors and transactions for creating, updating, searching and reading prescriptions and any other types of medication orders;
  • actors and transactions for creating, updating, searching and dispense reports, as well as consulting them;
  • core concepts that are impactful to these specifications or to their use

Organization of This Guide

Volume 1: Use Cases and Standards

This section delves into functional aspects, detailing various use cases, and standardizing them for a global perspective.

  • Prescriptions: Types and content of prescriptions.
  • Order Grouping: Grouping of orders with and without interdependencies.
  • Ordering Workflows: Common workflow aspects for medication ordering, considering approval, review, etc. with allowances for jurisdiction-specific requirements.

Volume 2: Transactions

This technical section focuses on the technical data exchange, defining each of the transactions - their triggers, expected results, and semantics.

Volume 3: Content and Terminology

Volume 3 describes data structures and terminology supporting this specification.

  • Medication Resource Definition: A common data structure to represent any medication.
  • Terminologies: Common terminologies for he product and its attributes.

HL7 Europe and European specifications

The IHE MPD Work was initiated based on the existing IHE profiles and anticipating a FHIR implementation, but has been decisively supported by HL7 Europe, who has worked on related specifications, which are related to past and ongoing projects and specifications that may be relevant.:

HL7 Gemini

GEMINI

IHE MPD is a Gemini project. This means that while the specification is edited and hosted by IHE, it has gone through review with the interested parties (work groups) at HL7 international. A single balloting process is used - while this is hosted by IHE, HL7 members have participated in the discussions and are also invited to participate in the comment process.


IHE Pharmacy profiles:

CMPD

the IHE Community Medication Prescription and Dispense is a CDA-based specification of Prescription and Dispense documents. The current IHE MPD profile covers a superset of the functionalities in CMPD, to allow transitioning from CDA-based architeture to FHIR-based interoperability.

MMA

The IHE Mobile Medication Administration supports the request and report of medication administrations. The Medication Administration is a specific type of medication order, and therefore is technically compatible with the current profile, but is further specified in the MMA profile.

Dependencies

This IG Contains the following dependencies on other IGs.

IGPackageFHIRComment
.. Medication Prescription and Dispense (MPD)ihe.pharm.mpd#1.0.0-comment-3R5
... HL7 Terminology (THO)hl7.terminology.r5#7.1.0R5Automatically added as a dependency - all IGs depend on HL7 Terminology
.... FHIR Extensions Packhl7.fhir.uv.extensions.r5#5.2.0R5
... FHIR Tooling Extensions IGhl7.fhir.uv.tools.r5#1.1.2R5for example references

Package hl7.fhir.uv.extensions.r5#5.2.0

This IG defines the global extensions - the ones defined for everyone. These extensions are always in scope wherever FHIR is being used (built Mon, Feb 10, 2025 21:45+1100+11:00)

Package hl7.fhir.uv.tools.r5#1.1.2

This IG defines the extensions that the tools use internally. Some of these extensions are content that are being evaluated for elevation into the main spec, and others are tooling concerns (built Tue, Mar 24, 2026 11:13+1100+11:00)

Cross Version Analysis

Global Profiles

There are no Global profiles defined

Intellectual Property

This publication includes IP covered under the following statements.