InventoryItem
A line of hospital or pharmacy stock inventory: item, code, identifiers, status. The base granularity of a FHIR stock state.
Purpose
InventoryItem describes a stocked item: drug, medical device, consumable, ingredient. Combined with InventoryReport, it models stock state per facility, per pharmacy cabinet, per OR. An emerging R5 standard for hospital logistics workflows.
Key elements
| Field | Type | Cardinality | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
identifier | Identifier[] | 0..* | Item identifiers. |
status | code | 1..1 | `active`, `inactive`, `entered-in-error`, `unknown`. |
category | CodeableConcept[] | 0..* | Category (drug, device, consumable). |
code | CodeableConcept[] | 0..* | Item code (UCC, GS1, CIP). |
name | BackboneElement[] | 0..* | Names and descriptions. |
responsibleOrganization | BackboneElement[] | 0..* | Responsible organisation. |
description | BackboneElement | 0..1 | Structured description. |
baseUnit | CodeableConcept | 0..1 | Base counting unit. |
netContent | Quantity | 0..1 | Net content. |
association | BackboneElement[] | 0..* | Associations to other items. |
characteristic | BackboneElement[] | 0..* | Characteristics (size, colour, lot type). |
instance | BackboneElement | 0..1 | Physical instance (serial, lot). |
JSON example
{
"resourceType": "InventoryItem",
"id": "example-inv-aspirin",
"status": "active",
"category": [{
"coding": [{
"system": "http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/inventoryitem-category",
"code": "drug"
}]
}],
"code": [{
"coding": [{
"system": "http://www.ansm.sante.fr/cip",
"code": "3400938153317",
"display": "Aspirine 500mg cp"
}]
}],
"name": [{
"name": "Aspirine 500mg, comprimé"
}],
"baseUnit": {
"coding": [{
"system": "http://unitsofmeasure.org",
"code": "{tab}"
}]
}
}Common pitfalls
- InventoryItem confused with Medication: Medication is clinical, InventoryItem is logistic.
- No baseUnit or netContent: counts cannot be aggregated.
- Missing GS1 GTIN: blocks barcode scanning in the pharmacy.
Related resources
- inventoryreport — stock state.
- medication — drug.
- device — device.
- substance — bulk substance.