B.C. Medication Value Set

The B.C. Medication Value Set supports therapeutic moiety (TM), non-proprietary therapeutic product (NTP), and manufactured product (MP) which can be integrated with ordering systems and clinical decision support tools (e.g., drug/drug and drug/problem interaction checking, translate to morphine equivalent dose, calculate anticoagulation dose recommendations etc.) where the therapeutic moiety is coded to common international standards. This enables the dose of therapeutic moiety components to be calculated without ambiguity, and the route of administration to be known discretely when ordering or dispensing medications.

The structure of the B.C. Medication Value Set is based on the Health Canada Drug product Database (DPD), the Canadian Clinical Drug Dataset (CCDD), and the B.C. Pharmacare Downloadable Data File. The combined files provide product specific information made available by the federal regulator of therapeutic drugs (Health Canada) for use in Canada, and links these three concepts (TM, NTP, and MP) to enhance content for incorporating drugs in Electronic Medical Record (EMR), Clinical Information Systems (CIS), and Pharmacy Management Systems (PMS).

Scope

The audience for this value set are:

•  Electronic Medical Records Systems (EMR),
•  Clinical Information Systems (CIS),
•  Pharmacy Management Systems (PMS),
•  Developers of IT solutions for B.C healthcare systems,
•  Professional health care practitioners, and
•  Organizations associated with the manufacture, distribution, and use of pharmaceutical preparations.

The scope of the medication value set provides a foundation for standardizing prescribing in B.C. while supporting the Provincial Prescription Management (PPM) initiative, and other use cases such as medication orders, medication reconciliation (Best Possible Medication History) or a Medication Statement (medication list/summary), which in turn are components of a Care Plan or Patient Clinical Summary.

Governance

The B.C. Medication Value Set is governed by the provincial Digital Health Strategy Office (DHSO) and Pharmaceutical, Laboratory & Blood Services Division (PLBSD).

Current Status

The current version of the B.C. Medication Value Set, and associated document materials are available for download. For any archived B.C. Medication Value Set files, please email the Health Information Standards team at HLTH.HISSupport@gov.bc.ca.

Maintenance

Significant analysis and review of documents and specifications were undertaken to make sure the standards developed would be applicable and attainable to the various stakeholder groups.

Wherever possible, content templates defined and reviewed by standards bodies were referenced, and appropriate constraints for the B.C. context applied.

The content of the ontology and value set may require post-production edits, additions and/or maintenance to address issues identified by technical validation. Additional adjustments may be required over time to reflect requirements in B.C. or to align with emerging pan-Canadian standards developments.  

Download

1. Download the B.C. Medication Ontology Guide v1.2 (PDF, 1.3MB).
2. Download the B.C. Medication Data Dictionary v1.4 (PDF, 275.5KB).
3. Download the B.C. Medication Value Set Excel File v3.1 (XLSX, 8.5MB).
4. Download the B.C. Medication Value Set CSV Files v3.1 (ZIP, 14.0MB).