Skip to main content Skip to footer

One Drug Database

For many years the NHSBSA has had two sources of drug data; Master Data Replacement (MDR) and Common Drug Reference (CDR). The MDR database is used for reporting purposes whilst the CDR database is used for the transactional processing of prescription items. There are inconsistencies in how the data is stored in each of the databases which can cause confusion, especially as different naming conventions are used in both systems.

We are currently running a project to improve this situation by migrating all drug usage to CDR and decommissioning the MDR Drug system completely.

Moving to one source of drug information will save the effort of maintaining two sets of drug records and improve quality by ensuring all NHSBSA applications, and external customers of NHSBSA drug data, are using a single and consistent source of drug data.

Delivering these benefits directly contributes to the NHSBSA strategic goals which are to generate efficiency across health and social care system; make things easy for our customers through the delivery of brilliant basics, and to collaborate to maximise the return on data to improve health outcomes for patients.

The project is underway and will hopefully be completed by the end of this calendar year, where all drug data which is currently held only in MDR will be migrated to CDR which will be then be the one single data source.  We will continue to keep you updated with our progress on this project.