NZF/NZULM FHIR API Newsletter

September 2025

Welcome to the September 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.

Medicine/Allergy group feedback

As many of you are aware one set of data that is not currently available in the FHIR API is our allergy/medicine groups. We are currently in the planning phase for what this data could and should look like in terms of FHIR resources.

Alongside this we will add API functionality, likely as custom operations, for vendors to make use of this data (probably in a similar way to how interactions work (see https://fhir-docs.nzf.org.nz/interactions.html)

If you currently use allergy/medicines groups (or plan to in the future) we would greatly appreciate if you could contact us with your use-cases and how you would ideally like to interact with this data. We want to make this as easy as possible for vendors so early design feedback would be very helpful.

We would also be interested to know if you use other sources for allergy checking and alerting and what these are.

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.

Recent changes

CVX Vaccine codes

We have now updated medication resources with CVX vaccine codes where appropriate. These have been added to the Medication.code field and have the system - https://standards.digital.health.nz/ns/NZVX-immunisation-code. These only apply to certain MP or MPUU medication resources.

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.