Guidance

Medicine supply disruption statistics, UK: background and methodology

How the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) puts together the twice-yearly statistics on medicine supply disruption in the UK.

• From: Department of Health and Social Care
• Published: 5 August 2026

Documents

Medicine supply disruption statistics, UK: background and methodology

HTML

Details

DHSC is notified about medicine supply issues or discontinuations primarily through formal reports submitted by pharmaceutical suppliers. These are submitted through DHSC’s online reporting tool, the Discontinuations and Shortages (DaSH) portal.

DHSC publishes medicine supply disruption statistics for the UK every 6 months.

This background and methodology document contains detailed information on the data source, coverage, definitions, methodology, quality assurance processes and limitations in these statistics.

Published 5 August 2026