Trust

Methodology

Sources

We archive published sources twice daily: DHSC Medicine Supply Notifications as relayed publicly by Community Pharmacy England; the NHSBSA Serious Shortage Protocol register and its protocol documents; and NHS dm+d (the Dictionary of Medicines and Devices) for product coding. Every original document is kept verbatim, content-addressed, before any parsing — so our history can always be re-derived and re-checked.

What we publish

Re-expressed facts (which product, which reference, which tier, which dates) and our own derived statistics (durations, extension counts, change feeds). We do not reproduce source editorial or clinical advice — every entry links to the source document instead. Dates the sources state fuzzily (“late August”) stay fuzzy here; we never invent precision.

Coverage & honesty

Coverage is England-first; Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not yet included. UK-wide claims appear only where the source is UK-wide (Serious Shortage Protocols). Source typos — and they exist — are preserved and flagged, not silently corrected. Where our record is incomplete, the gap is shown, not smoothed over. Our archive began in July 2026; Serious Shortage Protocol documents extend back to 2019.

Cadence & corrections

Sources are checked at 07:20 and 17:20 UTC; parsed data follows within the hour. Every page shows when sources were last checked and when the data last changed — distinct signals. Corrections are logged publicly when we get something wrong.

Who

Built and operated by Doctor Data Ltd — founded by Dr Mustafa Ghafouri, a medical doctor and former MHRA Lead Data Architect, who also built hospitalwaits.co.uk. ShortageSignal is not an official NHS or DHSC service.