Medication Shortage Hub
See the shortage. Coordinate the next step. Keep the evidence.
One shared workflow for shortage handling across pharmacy, GP, specialist and local system teams.
Primary and specialist care
Medicine shortages create a chain reaction.
Patients search, pharmacies chase stock, and GP teams absorb rework when local teams do not have one shared view.
See the Medication Shortage Hub in action
A single, shared view of every shortage case.
Integrated communication panel – live case tracking, decision thread, and audit trail.
Who is affected
A shortage is not only a supply issue. It becomes a patient, pharmacy and GP workload problem.
Once a medicine is hard to obtain, the local response often falls to patients, community pharmacies and practice teams. Everyone is trying to help, but the work is spread across phone calls, inboxes and incomplete local updates.
Patients are left searching for answers.
They may be told to try another pharmacy, call back later, wait for an alternative, or return to the GP. That creates anxiety, travel, repeat calls and uncertainty about the next safe step.
Pharmacies spend time locating stock and explaining delays.
Teams check suppliers, call branches, manage patient frustration, look for alternatives and contact practices, often without a quick way to share what has already been tried.
GP practices inherit reissue and alternative requests.
Requests arrive through calls, tasks and inbox messages. Practices need enough context to decide what to do, but the shortage history is rarely captured in one place.
The real local gap:
Not every shortage needs a new system decision, but every unresolved shortage needs a clear local status, owner, next action and patient-safe message.
Current response
The current workarounds help, but they do not give teams a fast local picture.
Serious Shortage Protocols (SSPs), national guidance and professional judgement remain essential. The problem is the local coordination layer around them: who has checked stock, what the patient has been told, whether the GP needs to act, and whether the issue is still unresolved.
SSPs and guidance
Useful where available, but they do not show which local patients, pharmacies or practices are still stuck.
Try another pharmacy
Patients may be asked to ring or visit elsewhere, but nobody has a shared record of what has already been checked.
Locate stock manually
Pharmacies spend time checking suppliers and other branches, then repeat the same explanation many times.
Local reports lag
By the time a pattern is visible centrally, frontline teams may already have spent days chasing, reissuing and escalating.
What is missing locally
- A quick way to see what pharmacies have already tried.
- A clear handoff when a GP review or alternative is needed.
- A consistent patient-safe explanation of the next step.
- A live list of unresolved local cases and repeated pressure points.
What should not be replaced
- Serious Shortage Protocols and official national shortage guidance.
- Clinical judgement and prescribing decisions.
- Supplier, wholesaler and pharmacy stock-control systems.
- Existing NHS records, prescribing systems or patient messaging routes.
Medication Hub
A shared shortage-handling workspace for the people doing the work.
The Medication Hub is designed to sit beneath official shortage guidance and help local teams coordinate the response: record the issue, show what has been tried, hand off the next action and close the loop.
Pharmacy shortage signal
- Record medicine, strength, form and supply problem.
- Capture what has been checked before asking the patient to search again.
- Add time-limited, pharmacy-confirmed availability notes where appropriate.
- Flag when GP or specialist review is needed.
GP action queue
- See which requests need a prescribing or reissue decision.
- View shortage context without relying on another phone call.
- Record the decision, owner and reason for closure.
- Escalate higher-risk medicines with a clearer audit trail.
Patient-safe next step
- Reduce conflicting advice between pharmacy and practice.
- Show whether the patient has already been redirected elsewhere.
- Keep a clear note of the agreed next action.
- Protect clinical judgement by keeping decisions with the right professional.
Local oversight
- PCN / ICB: see repeated medicines, sites and unresolved local pressure.
- Pharmacy leads: understand where stock-location work is repeating.
- GP leads: identify avoidable reissue and callback workload.
- Specialist teams: support escalation when medicine risk is higher.
Book a demo around a real shortage journey.
Walk through what happens when a patient cannot obtain a medicine, how the pharmacy records what has been tried, how the GP sees the request, and how local teams close the loop.