BNF code.
The 15-character legacy hierarchy the NHSBSA uses to code prescribing data, from chapter down to individual presentation.
Prescribing data is coded to the legacy British National Formulary hierarchy: chapter, section, paragraph, sub-paragraph, chemical substance, product, presentation. Fifteen characters that place every dispensed thing in a tree.
The chemical substance level, the first nine characters, is what most molecule-level analysis keys on, and it is what DoseTrend means by a molecule. Note the word legacy: the NHSBSA maintains this structure for continuity, and it no longer matches the chapters of the clinical BNF publication pharmacists actually read. Two different things share the name BNF, and the confusion is routine.
Dictionary of Medicines and Devices (dm+d) · The NHS standard dictionary of medicines: the identifiers that let prescribing datasets join to each other.
English Prescribing Data (EPD) · The monthly NHSBSA dataset behind almost every NHS prescribing chart: every item dispensed in the community in England, by practice and presentation.
Items (prescription items) · One item is one product on one prescription form, dispensed once. It is the unit of NHS prescribing volume, and it is not a patient.
See it on a real molecule.
Every molecule page uses this term somewhere: in the scorecard, the charts or the honesty strip. The definitions live here; the numbers live there.