NZF/NZULM FHIR API Newsletter

March 2026

Welcome to the March 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.

Pharmac Schedule Changes

As many of you are aware Pharmac have begun the process of updating how they manage and release funding schedule data.

See www.pharmac.govt.nz for more details.

Currently at the NZF/NZULM we process the existing schedule XML and release this in various forms in the NZULM CSV downloads, the NZF/C webservices and the FHIR API.

We are in discussions with Pharmac around the implications of the new schedule system and what that means for the NZF/NZULM and further distribution of the schedule data. At this point, it is almost certain that we will be unable to support CSV downloads of the schedule information when the new schedule system goes live. This will affect the NZULM downloads as well as the NZF webservice. However as one of our goals is to make the FHIR API as useful to vendors as possible it is still a possibility that we will provide the schedule data through our API. As mentioned this is still up for discussion with Pharmac but we would love to hear your feedback on this and the implications to your systems.

NZF/NZULM Medicines Portal

Many of you currently use our FHIR Viewer to view medication data and planning for API integrations.

We have been working on an upgrade of the FHIR viewer - the NZF/NZULM Medicines Portal. The portal will still provide the ability to search for and check medicines data, with an enhanced search and viewing history system as well as providing some FHIR queries for those integrating with the data.

We are also adding a range of extra modules to the portal which will be enabled on a per user basis.

These include:

Vendor webservice - the ability to check the version details and downloads from the NZF vendor webservice
Sponsors - the ability to easily find your own medication records along with the ability to apply for new listings and request changes to existing listings.
Interactions - the ability to test the interactions API for integration purposes.
Medicine groups - the ability to test the medicine groups API for integration purposes.

The medicines portal is now available in beta at https://medportal.nzf.org.nz

You can use your existing FHIR Viewer credentials to log in.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for new functionality please let us know.

Medicine/Allergy group feedback

As we've mentioned in previous newsletters we are moving our medicine group functionality to the FHIR API. Thank you to those that have expressed interest in this.

Although it is still very much open to change we have produced some FHIR documentation on the initial API calls.

fhir-docs.nzf.org.nz

Please let us know if you have any feedback.

For those that have expressed interest we will be in contact soon when we add support to test the API in the medicines portal.

Pregnancy/Breastfeeding information

The other commonly requested information we get is around pregnancy and/or breastfeeding information. With the current NZF webservice we provide this as part of the monograph XML however we are not planning on providing the same XML with the FHIR API.

Once again, if you use, or plan to use this information we would greatly appreciate hearing what your use-cases are and how ideally you would like this information provided.

We have progressed our work on this however we are still at the early stages of development. Our current plan is to provide monograph data in this format.

https://build.fhir.org/ig/HL7/emedicinal-product-info/index.html

We will keep you updated on progress with this. Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions for this.

Recent changes

There have been no recent structural updates to the FHIR API.

Upcoming changes

There are no FHIR API structural changes scheduled within the next 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.