This resource is primarily used for the identification and definition of a medication for the purposes of prescribing, dispensing, and administering a medication as well as for making statements about medication use.

A reference to a set of rules that were followed when the resource was constructed, and which must be understood when processing the content. Often, this is a reference to an implementation guide that defines the special rules along with other profiles etc.

Asserting this rule set restricts the content to be only understood by a limited set of trading partners. This inherently limits the usefulness of the data in the long term. However, the existing health eco-system is highly fractured, and not yet ready to define, collect, and exchange data in a generally computable sense. Wherever possible, implementers and/or specification writers should avoid using this element. Often, when used, the URL is a reference to an implementation guide that defines these special rules as part of it's narrative along with other profiles, value sets, etc.

An Extension

Defines a knowledge capability afforded by this knowledge artifact.

Defines a knowledge representation level provided by this knowledge artifact.

A comment containing additional documentation, a review comment, usage guidance, or other relevant information from a particular user.

An absolute URI that is used to identify this artifact when it is referenced in a specification, model, design or an instance; also called its canonical identifier. This SHOULD be globally unique and SHOULD be a literal address at which an authoritative instance of this artifact is (or will be) published. This URL can be the target of a canonical reference. It SHALL remain the same when the artifact is stored on different servers.

Can be a urn:uuid: or a urn:oid: but real http: addresses are preferred. Multiple instances may share the same URL if they have a distinct version.

The determination of when to create a new version of a resource (same url, new version) vs. defining a new artifact is up to the author. Considerations for making this decision are found in Technical and Business Versions.

In some cases, the resource can no longer be found at the stated url, but the url itself cannot change. Implementations can use the meta.source element to indicate where the current master source of the resource can be found.

The identifier that is used to identify this version of the artifact when it is referenced in a specification, model, design or instance. This is an arbitrary value managed by the artifact author and is not expected to be globally unique. For example, it might be a timestamp (e.g. yyyymmdd) if a managed version is not available. There is also no expectation that versions can be placed in a lexicographical sequence.

Indicates the mechanism used to compare versions to determine which is more current.

If set as a string, this is a FHIRPath expression that has two additional context variables passed in - %version1 and %version2 and will return a negative number if version1 is newer, a positive number if version2 and a 0 if the version ordering can't be successfully be determined.

Defines the versioning policy of the artifact.

A natural language name identifying the artifact. This name should be usable as an identifier for the module by machine processing applications such as code generation.

The name is not expected to be globally unique. The name should be a simple alphanumeric type name to ensure that it is machine-processing friendly.

A short, descriptive, user-friendly title for the artifact.

This name does not need to be machine-processing friendly and may contain punctuation, white-space, etc.

A Boolean value to indicate that this artifact is authored for testing purposes (or education/evaluation/marketing) and is not intended to be used for genuine usage.

The name of the organization or individual responsible for the release and ongoing maintenance of the artifact.

Usually an organization but may be an individual. The publisher (or steward) of the artifact is the organization or individual primarily responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the artifact. This is not necessarily the same individual or organization that developed and initially authored the content. The publisher is the primary point of contact for questions or issues with the artifact. This item SHOULD be populated unless the information is available from context.

A free text natural language description of the artifact from a consumer's perspective.

This description can be used to capture details such as comments about misuse, instructions for clinical use and interpretation, literature references, examples from the paper world, etc. It is not a rendering of the artifact as conveyed in the 'text' field of the resource itself. This item SHOULD be populated unless the information is available from context (e.g. the language of the artifact is presumed to be the predominant language in the place the artifact was created).

An Extension

The status of this artifact. Enables tracking the life-cycle of the content.

Business identifier for this medication.

The serial number could be included as an identifier.

A code (or set of codes) that specify this medication, or a textual description if no code is available. Usage note: This could be a standard medication code such as a code from RxNorm, SNOMED CT, IDMP etc. It could also be a national or local formulary code, optionally with translations to other code systems.

Depending on the context of use, the code that was actually selected by the user (prescriber, dispenser, etc.) will have the coding.userSelected set to true. As described in the coding datatype: "A coding may be marked as a "userSelected" if a user selected the particular coded value in a user interface (e.g. the user selects an item in a pick-list). If a user selected coding exists, it is the preferred choice for performing translations etc. Other codes can only be literal translations to alternative code systems, or codes at a lower level of granularity (e.g. a generic code for a vendor-specific primary one).

A coded concept that defines the type of a medication.

A code to indicate if the medication is in active use.

This status is intended to identify if the medication in a local system is in active use within a drug database or inventory. For example, a pharmacy system may create a new drug file record for a compounded product "ABC Hospital Special Cream" with an active status. At some point in the future, it may be determined that the drug record was created with an error and the status is changed to "entered in error". This status is not intended to specify if a medication is part of a particular formulary. It is possible that the drug record may be referenced by multiple formularies or catalogues and each of those entries would have a separate status.

A coded concept defining if the medication is in active use.

Identifies a particular constituent of interest in the product.

The ingredients need not be a complete list. If an ingredient is not specified, this does not indicate whether an ingredient is present or absent. If an ingredient is specified it does not mean that all ingredients are specified. It is possible to specify both inactive and active ingredients.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the element and that modifies the understanding of the element in which it is contained and/or the understanding of the containing element's descendants. Usually modifier elements provide negation or qualification. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension. Applications processing a resource are required to check for modifier extensions.

Modifier extensions SHALL NOT change the meaning of any elements on Resource or DomainResource (including cannot change the meaning of modifierExtension itself).

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Modifier extensions allow for extensions that cannot be safely ignored to be clearly distinguished from the vast majority of extensions which can be safely ignored. This promotes interoperability by eliminating the need for implementers to prohibit the presence of extensions. For further information, see the definition of modifier extensions.

The actual ingredient - either a substance (simple ingredient) or another medication of a medication.

The ingredient may reference a substance (for example, amoxicillin) or another medication (for example in the case of a compounded product, Glaxal Base).

The actual ingredient - either a substance (simple ingredient) or another medication of a medication.

The ingredient may reference a substance (for example, amoxicillin) or another medication (for example in the case of a compounded product, Glaxal Base).

Create a reference, following canonical reference semantics, to an artifact that uses the artifact-url and artifact-version extensions to provide a canonical identifier.

Information that only applies to packages (not products).

This resource is primarily used for the identification and definition of a medication for the purposes of prescribing, dispensing, and administering a medication as well as for making statements about medication use.

The logical id of the resource, as used in the URL for the resource. Once assigned, this value never changes.

The only time that a resource does not have an id is when it is being submitted to the server using a create operation.

The metadata about the resource. This is content that is maintained by the infrastructure. Changes to the content might not always be associated with version changes to the resource.

A reference to a set of rules that were followed when the resource was constructed, and which must be understood when processing the content. Often, this is a reference to an implementation guide that defines the special rules along with other profiles etc.

Asserting this rule set restricts the content to be only understood by a limited set of trading partners. This inherently limits the usefulness of the data in the long term. However, the existing health eco-system is highly fractured, and not yet ready to define, collect, and exchange data in a generally computable sense. Wherever possible, implementers and/or specification writers should avoid using this element. Often, when used, the URL is a reference to an implementation guide that defines these special rules as part of it's narrative along with other profiles, value sets, etc.

The base language in which the resource is written.

Language is provided to support indexing and accessibility (typically, services such as text to speech use the language tag). The html language tag in the narrative applies to the narrative. The language tag on the resource may be used to specify the language of other presentations generated from the data in the resource. Not all the content has to be in the base language. The Resource.language should not be assumed to apply to the narrative automatically. If a language is specified, it should it also be specified on the div element in the html (see rules in HTML5 for information about the relationship between xml:lang and the html lang attribute).

A human language.

A human-readable narrative that contains a summary of the resource and can be used to represent the content of the resource to a human. The narrative need not encode all the structured data, but is required to contain sufficient detail to make it "clinically safe" for a human to just read the narrative. Resource definitions may define what content should be represented in the narrative to ensure clinical safety.

Contained resources do not have narrative. Resources that are not contained SHOULD have a narrative. In some cases, a resource may only have text with little or no additional discrete data (as long as all minOccurs=1 elements are satisfied). This may be necessary for data from legacy systems where information is captured as a "text blob" or where text is additionally entered raw or narrated and encoded information is added later.

These resources do not have an independent existence apart from the resource that contains them - they cannot be identified independently, and nor can they have their own independent transaction scope.

This should never be done when the content can be identified properly, as once identification is lost, it is extremely difficult (and context dependent) to restore it again. Contained resources may have profiles and tags In their meta elements, but SHALL NOT have security labels.

An Extension

Defines a knowledge capability afforded by this knowledge artifact.

Defines a knowledge representation level provided by this knowledge artifact.

A comment containing additional documentation, a review comment, usage guidance, or other relevant information from a particular user.

An absolute URI that is used to identify this artifact when it is referenced in a specification, model, design or an instance; also called its canonical identifier. This SHOULD be globally unique and SHOULD be a literal address at which an authoritative instance of this artifact is (or will be) published. This URL can be the target of a canonical reference. It SHALL remain the same when the artifact is stored on different servers.

Can be a urn:uuid: or a urn:oid: but real http: addresses are preferred. Multiple instances may share the same URL if they have a distinct version.

The determination of when to create a new version of a resource (same url, new version) vs. defining a new artifact is up to the author. Considerations for making this decision are found in Technical and Business Versions.

In some cases, the resource can no longer be found at the stated url, but the url itself cannot change. Implementations can use the meta.source element to indicate where the current master source of the resource can be found.

The identifier that is used to identify this version of the artifact when it is referenced in a specification, model, design or instance. This is an arbitrary value managed by the artifact author and is not expected to be globally unique. For example, it might be a timestamp (e.g. yyyymmdd) if a managed version is not available. There is also no expectation that versions can be placed in a lexicographical sequence.

Indicates the mechanism used to compare versions to determine which is more current.

If set as a string, this is a FHIRPath expression that has two additional context variables passed in - %version1 and %version2 and will return a negative number if version1 is newer, a positive number if version2 and a 0 if the version ordering can't be successfully be determined.

Defines the versioning policy of the artifact.

A natural language name identifying the artifact. This name should be usable as an identifier for the module by machine processing applications such as code generation.

The name is not expected to be globally unique. The name should be a simple alphanumeric type name to ensure that it is machine-processing friendly.

A short, descriptive, user-friendly title for the artifact.

This name does not need to be machine-processing friendly and may contain punctuation, white-space, etc.

A Boolean value to indicate that this artifact is authored for testing purposes (or education/evaluation/marketing) and is not intended to be used for genuine usage.

The name of the organization or individual responsible for the release and ongoing maintenance of the artifact.

Usually an organization but may be an individual. The publisher (or steward) of the artifact is the organization or individual primarily responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the artifact. This is not necessarily the same individual or organization that developed and initially authored the content. The publisher is the primary point of contact for questions or issues with the artifact. This item SHOULD be populated unless the information is available from context.

A free text natural language description of the artifact from a consumer's perspective.

This description can be used to capture details such as comments about misuse, instructions for clinical use and interpretation, literature references, examples from the paper world, etc. It is not a rendering of the artifact as conveyed in the 'text' field of the resource itself. This item SHOULD be populated unless the information is available from context (e.g. the language of the artifact is presumed to be the predominant language in the place the artifact was created).

An Extension

The status of this artifact. Enables tracking the life-cycle of the content.

Business identifier for this medication.

The serial number could be included as an identifier.

A code (or set of codes) that specify this medication, or a textual description if no code is available. Usage note: This could be a standard medication code such as a code from RxNorm, SNOMED CT, IDMP etc. It could also be a national or local formulary code, optionally with translations to other code systems.

Depending on the context of use, the code that was actually selected by the user (prescriber, dispenser, etc.) will have the coding.userSelected set to true. As described in the coding datatype: "A coding may be marked as a "userSelected" if a user selected the particular coded value in a user interface (e.g. the user selects an item in a pick-list). If a user selected coding exists, it is the preferred choice for performing translations etc. Other codes can only be literal translations to alternative code systems, or codes at a lower level of granularity (e.g. a generic code for a vendor-specific primary one).

A coded concept that defines the type of a medication.

A code to indicate if the medication is in active use.

This status is intended to identify if the medication in a local system is in active use within a drug database or inventory. For example, a pharmacy system may create a new drug file record for a compounded product "ABC Hospital Special Cream" with an active status. At some point in the future, it may be determined that the drug record was created with an error and the status is changed to "entered in error". This status is not intended to specify if a medication is part of a particular formulary. It is possible that the drug record may be referenced by multiple formularies or catalogues and each of those entries would have a separate status.

A coded concept defining if the medication is in active use.

Describes the details of the manufacturer of the medication product. This is not intended to represent the distributor of a medication product.

Describes the form of the item. Powder; tablets; capsule.

When Medication is referenced from MedicationRequest, this is the ordered form. When Medication is referenced within MedicationDispense, this is the dispensed form. When Medication is referenced within MedicationAdministration, this is administered form.

A coded concept defining the form of a medication.

Specific amount of the drug in the packaged product. For example, when specifying a product that has the same strength (For example, Insulin glargine 100 unit per mL solution for injection), this attribute provides additional clarification of the package amount (For example, 3 mL, 10mL, etc.).

Identifies a particular constituent of interest in the product.

The ingredients need not be a complete list. If an ingredient is not specified, this does not indicate whether an ingredient is present or absent. If an ingredient is specified it does not mean that all ingredients are specified. It is possible to specify both inactive and active ingredients.

Unique id for the element within a resource (for internal references). This may be any string value that does not contain spaces.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the element. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the element and that modifies the understanding of the element in which it is contained and/or the understanding of the containing element's descendants. Usually modifier elements provide negation or qualification. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension. Applications processing a resource are required to check for modifier extensions.

Modifier extensions SHALL NOT change the meaning of any elements on Resource or DomainResource (including cannot change the meaning of modifierExtension itself).

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Modifier extensions allow for extensions that cannot be safely ignored to be clearly distinguished from the vast majority of extensions which can be safely ignored. This promotes interoperability by eliminating the need for implementers to prohibit the presence of extensions. For further information, see the definition of modifier extensions.

The actual ingredient - either a substance (simple ingredient) or another medication of a medication.

The ingredient may reference a substance (for example, amoxicillin) or another medication (for example in the case of a compounded product, Glaxal Base).

The actual ingredient - either a substance (simple ingredient) or another medication of a medication.

The ingredient may reference a substance (for example, amoxicillin) or another medication (for example in the case of a compounded product, Glaxal Base).

Unique id for the element within a resource (for internal references). This may be any string value that does not contain spaces.

May be used to represent additional information that is not part of the basic definition of the element. To make the use of extensions safe and manageable, there is a strict set of governance applied to the definition and use of extensions. Though any implementer can define an extension, there is a set of requirements that SHALL be met as part of the definition of the extension.

There can be no stigma associated with the use of extensions by any application, project, or standard - regardless of the institution or jurisdiction that uses or defines the extensions. The use of extensions is what allows the FHIR specification to retain a core level of simplicity for everyone.

Create a reference, following canonical reference semantics, to an artifact that uses the artifact-url and artifact-version extensions to provide a canonical identifier.

A reference to a location at which the other resource is found. The reference may be a relative reference, in which case it is relative to the service base URL, or an absolute URL that resolves to the location where the resource is found. The reference may be version specific or not. If the reference is not to a FHIR RESTful server, then it should be assumed to be version specific. Internal fragment references (start with '#') refer to contained resources.

Using absolute URLs provides a stable scalable approach suitable for a cloud/web context, while using relative/logical references provides a flexible approach suitable for use when trading across closed eco-system boundaries. Absolute URLs do not need to point to a FHIR RESTful server, though this is the preferred approach. If the URL conforms to the structure "/[type]/[id]" then it should be assumed that the reference is to a FHIR RESTful server.

The expected type of the target of the reference. If both Reference.type and Reference.reference are populated and Reference.reference is a FHIR URL, both SHALL be consistent.

The type is the Canonical URL of Resource Definition that is the type this reference refers to. References are URLs that are relative to http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/ e.g. "Patient" is a reference to http://hl7.org/fhir/StructureDefinition/Patient. Absolute URLs are only allowed for logical models (and can only be used in references in logical models, not resources).

This element is used to indicate the type of the target of the reference. This may be used which ever of the other elements are populated (or not). In some cases, the type of the target may be determined by inspection of the reference (e.g. a RESTful URL) or by resolving the target of the reference; if both the type and a reference is provided, the reference SHALL resolve to a resource of the same type as that specified.

Aa resource (or, for logical models, the URI of the logical model).

An identifier for the target resource. This is used when there is no way to reference the other resource directly, either because the entity it represents is not available through a FHIR server, or because there is no way for the author of the resource to convert a known identifier to an actual location. There is no requirement that a Reference.identifier point to something that is actually exposed as a FHIR instance, but it SHALL point to a business concept that would be expected to be exposed as a FHIR instance, and that instance would need to be of a FHIR resource type allowed by the reference.

When an identifier is provided in place of a reference, any system processing the reference will only be able to resolve the identifier to a reference if it understands the business context in which the identifier is used. Sometimes this is global (e.g. a national identifier) but often it is not. For this reason, none of the useful mechanisms described for working with references (e.g. chaining, includes) are possible, nor should servers be expected to be able resolve the reference. Servers may accept an identifier based reference untouched, resolve it, and/or reject it - see CapabilityStatement.rest.resource.referencePolicy.

When both an identifier and a literal reference are provided, the literal reference is preferred. Applications processing the resource are allowed - but not required - to check that the identifier matches the literal reference

Applications converting a logical reference to a literal reference may choose to leave the logical reference present, or remove it.

Reference is intended to point to a structure that can potentially be expressed as a FHIR resource, though there is no need for it to exist as an actual FHIR resource instance - except in as much as an application wishes to actual find the target of the reference. The content referred to be the identifier must meet the logical constraints implied by any limitations on what resource types are permitted for the reference. For example, it would not be legitimate to send the identifier for a drug prescription if the type were Reference(Observation|DiagnosticReport). One of the use-cases for Reference.identifier is the situation where no FHIR representation exists (where the type is Reference (Any).

Plain text narrative that identifies the resource in addition to the resource reference.

This is generally not the same as the Resource.text of the referenced resource. The purpose is to identify what's being referenced, not to fully describe it.

Indication of whether this ingredient affects the therapeutic action of the drug.

True indicates that the ingredient affects the therapeutic action of the drug (i.e. active). False indicates that the ingredient does not affect the therapeutic action of the drug (i.e. inactive).

Specifies how many (or how much) of the items there are in this Medication. For example, 250 mg per tablet. This is expressed as a ratio where the numerator is 250mg and the denominator is 1 tablet.

Information that only applies to packages (not products).