UK Pharmacy Growth & Service Adoption Signals

Turn official monthly NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) contractor activity into decision-ready, pharmacy-level signals. The Actor dynamically resolves the newest two consecutive CSV resources from the NHSBSA CKAN API; it does not scrape web pages or require credentials.

Try it with sample data

{
  "mode": "sample"
}

Sample mode makes zero NHSBSA HTTP requests, never opens the production state store, and sends deterministic embedded previous/current records through the same comparison logic as live mode. It produces three representative contractor signals.

Input

• mode: live (default) or sample.
• maxItems: maximum Dataset items, default 100, maximum 10000.
• minGrowthPercent: optional common percentage override. Defaults are 30% for service activity and 10% for dispensing.
• minAbsoluteGrowth: optional service-activity absolute-increase override; default 25. Dispensing uses an internal default of 1,000 items.

Signals

The current long-form source schema is mapped through explicit aliases. SERVICE_ACTIVITY_STARTED:<service> means the preceding month contains zero/no recorded activity and the current month contains at least 10 activities. It does not claim that a contractor registered for the service. SERVICE_ACTIVITY_GROWTH:<service> requires both 25 additional activities and 30% growth by default. DISPENSING_ACTIVITY_GROWTH requires 1,000 additional prescription items and 10% growth by default. These thresholds suppress routine small month-to-month variation; they are qualification rules, not statistical anomaly detection.

Supported, exact-source service families are Pharmacy First consultations, New Medicine Service interventions, blood-pressure clinic checks/ABPM, and contraception initiation/ongoing/emergency consultations. Related rows are summed per contractor. Each contractor produces at most one item, containing every qualifying reason and compact previous/current/change metrics. Results are sorted by strongest signal, then contractor code.

The defaults were calibrated against the April–May 2026 official distributions available during development. They filter tiny changes while retaining material month-on-month movement. Overrides affect growth qualification, never the zero-to-positive activity-start rule.

Live runs

Every live Run resolves, downloads, parses, and normalizes the latest two consecutive official monthly resources, then immediately emits the currently qualifying signals. No prior Run or persistent comparison baseline is required. Repeating a Run against the same source pair and input produces the same deterministically ranked results. Summary and bounded schema/resource diagnostics are written outside the Default Dataset.

Source and caveats

Source: NHSBSA Pharmacy and appliance contractor dispensing data, published monthly by NHS Business Services Authority Open Data. Data has a reporting lag and can receive backdated corrections. Signals describe recorded contractor activity—not guaranteed revenue, commercial performance, or service registration. Missing activity does not prove a pharmacy does not offer a service.

NHSBSA data is attributed to NHS Business Services Authority Open Data and is reusable under the source's published Open Government Licence where applicable. This Actor is independent and does not imply NHS or NHSBSA endorsement.