How to get the most out of Meduso
A plain-English guide to every part of the site: what each section is, what you can do with it, and the questions people actually ask.
Search
The front door to the whole register. One box covers every NHS community pharmacy in the UK — by name, town, postcode, phone number or contractor code. It also understands plain-English queries: type "boots in wales" or "distance selling in leeds" and the filters set themselves.
- Filter results by nation, pharmacy type, region or ICB
- Sort any column in the results table by clicking its heading
- Export exactly what you see to CSV
- Switch to the map view to see every match plotted
- Use "near me" to find pharmacies within a radius of where you are
- Press / to jump into the search box, M to flip between list and map, and ? to see the shortcut card
- Open a pharmacy and come back — the table restores your exact scroll position and loaded rows
- Share your favourites: switch Favourites on and press Share — the link carries the list with it
- Click into the search box to see recent searches and recently viewed profiles
- Open-now button shows a live count of results open at this moment
- Rows show an amber dot when you have saved a private note on that pharmacy
Worth knowing: Searching a chain name like "asda" shows you the count straight away, so you can sanity-check the result before you scroll.
Maps & the access map
Two map tools live here. The search map plots any result set with clustering, and the access map shows how far every postcode district in the UK is from its nearest pharmacy — the quickest way to spot areas that are poorly served.
- See pharmacy "deserts" — districts ranked by distance to the nearest pharmacy
- Find the GP surgeries whose patients face the longest trip
- View chain coverage as a spider-web (Network) or a heat map to see where a chain is concentrated
- Open the Layers menu to stack on GP surgeries and clinics (by CQC rating), dental contracts (by UDA delivery), NHS trusts, and six categories of CQC care — or switch pharmacy pins off entirely
- Tap any town or chain name inside a cluster popup to filter the whole site to it — the fastest way from a map hot spot to a clean list
- Click any row in the map legend to hide that layer — handy when you have scrolled away from the toolbar
- Use Select area to drop a circle anywhere and get an instant count of pharmacies, surgeries, dentists and trusts inside it
- Click any pin for the full pharmacy or practice profile
- Click any numbered cluster to see what is inside before you zoom — store count, top towns and top names — then either zoom in or press "Browse these stores as a list" to sort and export exactly those stores in the table
- Click cluster names in the GP, dentist, trust and care layers to jump straight to that location's profile
- Use the UK button (top right) to snap back to the whole country, and the scale bar (bottom right) to judge distances
- Crosshair button (top-right) flies the map to your location — nothing leaves your device
- The map remembers your last position and zoom between visits
Worth knowing: The toolbar above the map collapses: the Filters button tucks the search filters away so the map gets the screen, and the count badge reminds you how many filters are active.
Care directory (CQC)
Every CQC-regulated location in England — over 57,000 of them. Care homes, home care agencies, independent clinics, hospitals, hospices, ambulances and prison healthcare, each with its latest rating, inspection date and contact details.
- Filter by category: care homes, home care, clinics, hospitals, hospices or other care
- Search by name, town or postcode
- See the latest CQC rating and when it was last inspected
- Plot any category on the search map from the Layers menu, coloured by rating
Worth knowing: Combine the care layer with Select area on the map to profile every regulated service in a neighbourhood in one click.
The Meduso helper
The bubble at the bottom right is an assistant that knows the whole site. Ask it how anything works, where a feature lives, or for live numbers — "how many pharmacies are in Leeds?", "Boots vs Superdrug?", "which town has the most pharmacies?" — and it answers from the data, entirely in your browser.
- Explain any page or feature in plain English
- Count and compare records in the live register
- Point you at the right page with a direct link
- Open it from the keyboard: Ctrl+K, then "Ask the Meduso helper"
Pharmacy profiles
Every pharmacy has its own page: address, contact details, opening status, thirteen months of dispensing volumes, EPS share, Pharmacy First consultations, vaccinations, ownership, and the GP surgeries it likely serves.
- Read the dispensing trend month by month
- See which surgeries feed prescriptions to the pharmacy
- Check deprivation context for the local area
- Add the pharmacy to favourites or a comparison
- Share or export the profile
GP surgery directory
Every GP practice in the UK with its registered list size, prescribing volume, CQC rating (England), Primary Care Network membership and patient survey scores.
- Sort by list size, CQC rating, survey score or biggest year-on-year survey improvement
- Filter by nation, CQC rating, region or PCN
- Open a practice page for survey bars vs England, prescribing history and nearby pharmacies
- Export any filtered set to CSV, including survey columns
- Returning from a practice profile restores your exact scroll position and loaded rows
Worth knowing: The "Most improved YoY" sort is the one journalists and federation leads tend to want first — it surfaces practices turning things around.
GP Patient Survey league
The GP Patient Survey is the largest patient-experience survey in England — hundreds of thousands of patients, every year, run by Ipsos for NHS England. This page turns it into rankings: the best, the most improved and the biggest fallers, for practices, networks and whole ICB areas.
- Switch between eleven measures: overall experience, phone access, the NHS App, reception staff and more
- See year-on-year movement everywhere a practice took part in both editions
- Compare ICBs on a sortable, response-weighted table
- Export the ICB table to CSV
Worth knowing: Rankings need at least 50 completed questionnaires per practice, so one loud month of responses cannot buy a league position.
Primary Care Networks
PCNs are groups of neighbouring GP practices that share staff and services. We list every network in England from the official ODS register, with member practices, combined list sizes, prescribing volume, CQC mix and survey scores.
- Search networks by name, code or ICB
- Sort by patients, practices, survey score or survey movement
- Open a network page for its member list and survey panel
Analytics
The market dashboards: thirteen months of dispensing volumes, chain market share, Pharmacy First activity, ICB league tables, corporate movers and drug spend by BNF chapter.
- Track national dispensing trends month by month
- See which chains are gaining or losing volume
- Compare ICBs on activity per head
- Break down £11bn+ of drug spend by therapeutic area
EPS nominations
When a patient chooses a pharmacy for electronic prescriptions, that is an EPS nomination. NHS England publishes the counts weekly, and we turn them into a leaderboard: totals, biggest gains and losses, and chain market share.
- See which pharmacies patients are actively choosing
- Spot the biggest weekly gains and losses
- Track chain share of nominations over time
Worth knowing: Nominations are the closest public signal to patient loyalty — a pharmacy rising here is winning repeat custom, not just passing trade.
Prescription flows
A model of which GP surgeries feed which pharmacies. It combines practice prescribing volumes with pharmacy catchments to estimate where prescriptions actually go.
- See the estimated catchment of any pharmacy
- Find the surgeries that feed it
- Flag catchments at risk because a feeder surgery has a weak CQC rating
NHS services dashboard
What pharmacies actually do beyond dispensing: Pharmacy First consultations by pathway, New Medicine Service, flu and covid vaccinations, blood pressure checks and contraception — per contractor, with league tables.
- Compare service delivery across LPC areas
- Find gaps where a service is not being offered locally
- See which contractors lead on each service
Drug Tariff Prices
Every basic price in Part VIIIA of the NHS Drug Tariff — the per-pack amount pharmacies are reimbursed — parsed fresh from each monthly NHSBSA edition, with full price history back to 2010 for most products via the OpenPrescribing tariff mirror.
- Search any drug, formulation, brand or BNF code across ~3,300 products
- Sort by pack price, per-unit cost or year-on-year change
- Click any product for its full price curve back to 2010, with all-time high and low
- See inline 12-edition sparklines for every product
- Rank the biggest price movers over one month, 12 months and five years
- Filter by tariff category (A, C, K, L, M and more)
- Export the filtered list to CSV
- Check the supply-risk watchlist — products flagged for discontinuation, single-source supply or fresh concessions
- See live supplier counts, legal category (POM/P/GSL) and discontinuation status from the dm+d dictionary on any product
- Filter the whole table to supply-risk products with one click
Worth knowing: Pair this with Price Concessions: when a product's tariff price lags a spiking market, a concession usually follows — the 12-month movers list is the early warning.
Price concessions
When a drug cannot be sourced at tariff price, the Department of Health grants a concession. We track every current concession, rolled-over items, and the premium over the standard Category M tariff, updated monthly.
- See this month's concession list the day it lands
- Check which items keep rolling over month after month
- Compare concession prices against the tariff
Register watch
Our pipeline diffs the official registers every day. Every opening, closure and relocation lands here, alongside the biggest patient-survey movers when each survey edition publishes.
- Filter by nation or search by name and code
- Export the full change log to CSV
- See survey risers and fallers next to register changes
CQC rating tracker
Every time the CQC republishes its ratings we diff the new file against the last one and record each upgrade, downgrade and first-ever rating for GP practices and NHS trusts.
- See rating changes the week they happen
- Browse recently inspected practices
- Open the official CQC report for any change
Pharmacy companies
Every pharmacy grouped by its owning company — Boots, Well, ASDA, Tesco, Rowlands and thousands of independents — so you can see the market by owner rather than by site.
- Compare chain footprints and dispensing volumes
- Find every site belonging to one owner
- Track ownership changes through the register watch
Dental contracts
NHS dental contracts in England: UDA delivery against target, patient numbers and contract values, so you can see which practices are delivering their contracted activity.
- Sort contracts by delivery percentage or value
- Spot under-delivering contracts by area
NHS trusts
Every NHS trust and foundation trust in the UK from the ODS register, with CQC ratings where they exist.
- Search and filter the trust register
- Follow rating changes on the CQC tracker
Drug safety alerts
MHRA drug safety alerts and recalls, refreshed daily from GOV.UK, so there is one place to check before dispensing.
- Read current alerts
- Check alert history by date
My Scope, compare & favourites
Your private workspace. Favourites, comparisons and search history live in your own browser — nothing is uploaded unless you sign in and choose to sync.
- Pin pharmacies and surgeries as favourites
- Run side-by-side comparisons
- Pick up searches where you left off
Exports & the API
Almost every table on the site exports to CSV, the full register downloads as Excel, and paid plans include a REST API with typed JSON endpoints for everything we publish.
- Export any filtered table to CSV
- Download the full Excel register free
- Integrate the data into your own tools with an API key
State of UK Pharmacy report
A written, citeable report built from the same data: market structure, access, services and the year's big movements — the briefing document people send to their board.
- Read the headline findings
- Reference it with confidence — every figure cites its source
Frequently asked questions
What is Meduso?
Meduso is an independent intelligence site for UK pharmacy and general practice. We take the official open data published by the NHS bodies — registers, dispensing volumes, patient surveys, inspections — and turn it into something you can actually search, map, rank and export. It is run by Medstack Ltd and funded by sister projects; all profits go to charity.
Where does the data come from?
Official public sources only: NHS Business Services Authority (pharmacy registers and dispensing in England), NHS Organisation Data Service (GP practices, PCNs, trusts, Wales), Public Health Scotland, HSC Business Services Organisation (Northern Ireland), the CQC, the GP Patient Survey (Ipsos for NHS England), the MHRA and postcodes.io for geocoding. Nothing is scraped from directories or submitted by users.
How fresh is it?
The pipeline checks every source daily. Registers update when the national bodies republish (usually monthly); dispensing data lags about two months by NHS BSA convention; EPS nominations are weekly; MHRA alerts are daily. Every page shows a freshness stamp saying when its data was last checked.
Is it really free?
The directory, maps, rankings, guides and headline analytics are free forever, no account needed. Pro (£24/yr + VAT) and Business (£48/yr + VAT) add things professionals asked for: full-history exports, saved alerts, PDF reports and API access. All prices are plus VAT, and profits are donated to charity.
What is the care directory?
Beyond pharmacies and GP surgeries, we index every CQC-regulated location in England — over 57,000 care homes, home care agencies, clinics, hospitals, hospices and more — with ratings and inspection dates. Browse it on the care page, or layer any category onto the map, coloured by rating.
How do the map layers work?
The Layers menu above the map switches whole datasets on and off: pharmacies (your search results), GP surgeries and clinics, dentists, NHS trusts, and six categories of CQC care. Each layer has its own colour scheme and legend — and clicking a row in the legend hides that layer without scrolling back up.
What is the bubble in the corner?
That is the Meduso helper. It answers plain-English questions about the site and the data — from "how do I export a CSV?" to "how many Boots are there?" — and links you straight to the right page. It runs in your browser; nothing you ask is sent anywhere.
How do I know when things change?
Three ways. Register Watch logs every pharmacy opening, closure and ownership change; the CQC tracker logs every rating change; and the What's new page logs every change to Meduso itself — the site is in public trial, and the beta number in the footer ticks up with each deploy.
Can I use this data in my own work?
Yes. The underlying data is Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence v3.0 — you can reuse it with attribution. Our CSV exports and API make that practical. If you republish figures, citing Meduso and the original NHS source keeps everyone honest.
Why does a pharmacy show no dispensing figures?
Dispensing volumes come from NHS BSA, so they cover English contractors. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish pharmacies have register data (address, status, type) but the devolved nations do not publish equivalent per-contractor dispensing files, so charts simply do not appear for them.
What are "distance selling" pharmacies?
Pharmacies that operate without a walk-in premises — mail-order and internet pharmacies, in everyday terms. They are on the register like any other contractor, and you can filter them in or out of any search. There are around 460 of them.
How accurate are the prescription flow estimates?
They are a model, not a measurement. We know what each surgery prescribes and where each pharmacy is; the model estimates the share of a surgery's prescriptions likely to land at each nearby pharmacy. Treat it as a strong steer for catchment analysis, not an exact count.
What is the GP Patient Survey and why should I trust the league?
It is the official annual survey of patients in England, run by Ipsos for NHS England with hundreds of thousands of responses. We use the survey's own published summary percentages — no hand-rolled scoring — and leagues only include practices with at least 50 completed questionnaires, so rankings are statistically meaningful.
Does the site cover Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
Yes — the pharmacy and GP registers cover all four nations, and each nation has its own landing page. Some datasets are England-only by nature (PCNs, CQC ratings, the GP Patient Survey) because the devolved systems run their own equivalents; we say so on the page whenever that is the case.
Do you track me?
No analytics beacons, no advertising trackers. Favourites and search history are stored in your own browser. If you create an account we store only what the account needs to function.
Something looks wrong in the data. What do I do?
Tell us — there is a report route on every profile. Errors usually trace back to the source register, and because the pipeline re-reads the sources daily, upstream corrections flow through automatically. If it is our processing at fault, we fix the pipeline rather than patching one record.
How do I spot a medicine that might go into shortage?
Open Drug Tariff prices and look at the supply-risk watchlist near the top. It scores every product for warning signs: all supplier packs discontinued in the NHS dm+d dictionary, only one or two listed suppliers, a tariff price raised last month, or a fresh price concession (concessions are usually granted because the market price spiked when supply tightened). Click any flagged product to see its supplier list and price curve, or hit the Supply risk chip to filter the whole table.