Pharmaceutical and Natural Products Value Sets
Last updated on April 9, 2025The Pharmaceutical and Natural Products Domain value sets are a repository of all medications made available for use in Canada, BC Product Identification Numbers, BC Low-Cost Alternative & Special Authority medications, drug shortage lists, vaccines authorized for use in Canada and internationally, and Licensed Natural Health Products, including product-specific information coded to standardized terminology to promote interoperability.
The BC Pharmaceutical and Natural Product Domain contains value sets that support the following:
- BC Medication Value Set which Health Canada Drug product Database (DPD), the Canadian Clinical Drug Dataset (CCDD), and the BC Pharmacare Downloadable Data File and supports therapeutic moiety (TM), non-proprietary therapeutic product (NTP), and manufactured products (MP).
- The combined files merge product specific information made available by the federal regulator of therapeutic drugs (Health Canada) for use in Canada, and links these three concepts (MP, NTP, and TM) to enhance content for incorporating drugs in Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Clinical Information Systems (CIS), and Pharmacy Management Systems (PMS).
- BC Immunizing Agents and Vaccine Catalogue Value Set is aligned to and extends Health Canada’s National Vaccine Catalogue (NVC) dataset which aggregates data from Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Canada Health Infoway.
- The BC catalogue provides a comprehensive list of immunizing agents and vaccine products, standardized terminology, mapping between manufactured products and Immunizing Agents, and BC Product Identification Numbers (PINs) related to vaccines used in PharmaNet.
- BC Licensed Natural Health Product (LNHP) Value Set contains information about natural health products that have been issued a product license and assessed by Health Canada to be safe, effective and of high quality under their recommended conditions of use.
- Licensed natural health products (e.g., herb and plant-based remedies, homeopathic medicines, omega 3,6,9 and essential fatty acids, probiotics, and vitamins and mineral supplements) are identified by the eight-digit Natural Product Number (NPN) or Homeopathic Medicine Number (DIN-HM) on the label.
Scope
The audience for this value set are:
- Digital Health Solutions such as Clinical Information Systems (CIS), Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and Pharmacy Management Systems (PMS)
- Developers of IT solutions for B.C healthcare systems, organizations associated with the manufacture, distribution, and use of pharmaceutical preparations, and
- Professional health care practitioners.
The scope of the Pharmaceutical and Natural Product Domain Value Sets provides a foundation for standardizing prescribing, dispensing, recording of pharmaceuticals and non-pharmaceuticals, and immunization records in BC while supporting electronic prescribing, 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 BC Pharmaceutical Domain Value Set is governed by the provincial Digital Health Strategy Office (DHSO) and BC Ministry of Health’s Pharmaceutical, Laboratory & Blood Services Division (PLBSD).
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 BC context applied. Additional adjustments may be required over time to reflect requirements in BC or to align with emerging pan-Canadian standards developments.
Current Status
The current version of the BC Pharmaceutical and Natural Product Domain Value Sets, and associated document materials are available for download.
For any archived BC Pharmaceutical Domain Value Set files, please contact the Health Information Standards team at: