/nhs/medicines/search

POST /api/nhs/medicines/search

Price: 5 credits

List NHS medicines from the A to Z index, optionally restricted to a starting letter or matched by a keyword in the title. Returns each medicine's title (often with brand names in brackets), identifier and page URL, plus the referenced medicine when an entry is a cross-reference.

How to use it

Browse or search the NHS medicines A to Z. Pass letter to restrict to one starting letter, or keyword to match titles (e.g. 'ibuprofen'). Returns title, alias, see_also and url for each match. Feed alias into nhs/medicines for the full guide.

Parameters

• access-token string required

Request body

• timeout integer — Max scrapping execution timeout (in seconds) (default: 300; min: 20; max: 1500)
• letter string nullable — Restrict to medicines starting with this letter (A-Z)
• keyword string nullable — Match medicines whose title contains this text
• count integer required — Max number of results to return (min: 1)

Response

• @type string (default: "NhsMedicineSearchItem")
• alias string required
• see_also string nullable
• url string required

Errors

• 422 — The request body did not validate Check the fields against this schema. A URN with the wrong prefix is the most common cause.
• 408 — The request ran past its time limit Raise `timeout` in the request body, up to the maximum this endpoint documents. Lowering `count` or turning off the `with_*` flags also helps, because less work finishes sooner.
• 412 — The entity was not found, or a precondition failed Retrying will not help: either the entity does not exist, or the input points at a different one.
• 429 — Too many requests: a rate limit or a usage window is exhausted When the response carries an X-Retry-After header, wait that many seconds and retry: the same number is in the body as `detail.retry_after`, and the limit clears once that window passes. The message in the body names the limit that was hit.
• 500 — Something broke on our side Retrying will not help. If it keeps happening, send us the X-Request-ID from the response headers.
• 529 — Rate limit reached, or the endpoint is overloaded Wait at least 30 seconds, then retry.

Response headers

• X-Error — Error message text (present only on error)
• X-Request-ID — Unique request identifier
• X-Execution-Time — Execution time in seconds
• X-Result-Count — How many records the body carries. 0 means an empty result, which is a normal answer and not by itself an error. A non-zero count can come back together with X-Error when the failure happened partway through — read this header and X-Error independently.
• X-Total-Available-Results — How many records exist for this query, when the endpoint can say. On a `dry_run` request this is the answer and the body is empty. It saturates: the endpoint's documented maximum means 'at least that many', any smaller number is exact.
• X-Warning — Present when the request body carried keys this endpoint does not document. They were ignored, so any filter you meant to apply through them did not apply. Check the spelling against this schema and retry.
• X-Retry-After — Seconds to wait before retrying. Present only on 429.