NZF/NZULM FHIR API Newsletter

August 2025

Welcome to the August edition of the NZF/NZULM FHIR API technical updates newsletter. Our goal is to keep you informed about the latest developments and provide clear explanations of updates to the NZF/NZULM FHIR API.

These newsletters will cover upcoming changes, recent changes, helpful information and potential new features we've been discussing to grasp an idea of interest from the vendors.

We will aim to publish these newsletters on a regular basis and make them as useful as possible, so please share your feedback on the content or structure to help us improve.

Recent changes

S29 legal classifications for medicinal cannabis products

As discussed in our previous newsletter we have updated our logic for publishing legal classifications for medicinal cannabis products. These have now been published into the production dataset.

Details:
Products containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) approved under the medicinal cannabis scheme are Controlled Drugs. THC products that are manufactured using cannabis extracts (eg oral liquid: solution dose–forms) are class B1 Controlled Drugs and products containing dried cannabis (tea or inhalation dose–forms) are class C1 Controlled Drugs.

Validation errors

We have fixed a validation issue in the text field of medications where the & symbol was not correctly encoded. This has been fixed and published in our prod dataset.

Upcoming changes

CVX Vaccine codes

Currently, where appropriate, CVX vaccine codes are added to medications via the nzf-description extensions. This location was a holdover from the original NZULM dataset. For backward compatibility reasons we are keeping these codes there but we are also adding them into the Medication.code field. These will have the system - https://standards.digital.health.nz/ns/NZVX-immunisation-code

This change will be going into production this month.

Helpful Information

Formulary monograph links

A number of vendors, particularly on the old NZF webservice, often require a link between a NZMT code and an NZF/C monograph. Each medication in the FHIR API contains links via the nzf-link extension to DocumentReferences representing the monograph where applicable.

However, for a lot of use cases, using the FHIR API (or the old webservice) is not necessary. The websites themselves will accept an NZMT code and display the appropriate monograph:

For example:

https://nzf.org.nz/article/sctid/10037191000116105

In some cases a code may be in multiple monographs. When this occurs a summary page is displayed showing the applicable monographs.

For example:

https://nzf.org.nz/article/sctid/10056451000116109

If a code is not in any monograph within the formulary then a message is displayed along with any monographs that might be relevant.

For example:

https://nzf.org.nz/article/sctid/50236241000117102

Ideas for improvement to the API

The following ideas are currently in discussion. There is no commitment to implementing these ideas at this stage.

UCUM

We have had a request to add UCUM support to our dataset. We are in the early days of investigating this but want to gauge interest from vendors. At this stage we are considering providing a concept map from applicable NZULM codes to the matching UCUM code.

We'd appreciate any feedback you have (email fhir@nzformulary.org) on whether this is a feature that you would want to use and/or whether a concept map would be a suitable method for distribution.

Content update notifications

Currently, content updates to the API data are frequently identified through polling, either of the Medication resource or metadata. While the FHIR standard supports subscription notifications, our server does not yet implement this feature. We are exploring alternatives, such as events, webhooks, or email notifications. If this interests you, please let us know your preferred option.

Funding summary

Funding information is currently added at the CTPP level. A common use case is determining if an MPUU or TPUU has any funded products. While this can be derived via the relatedMedication extension, we are considering adding an extension to MPUUs/TPUUs summarizing this information (e.g. “This MPUU has at least one fully funded product”). If this feature would benefit your use case, please share your thoughts.