NHS South East London is an early adopter of NHS England’s Single National Formulary (SNF) programme and is adopting the new national formulary classification terminology. The SNF aims to standardise formulary terminology across England, making prescribing responsibilities clearer and reducing variation between local formularies. The new formulary category definitions move away from colour-based categories to text-based definitions with no colour coding. This is a change in terminology and presentation only and does not alter existing prescribing responsibilities, shared care requirements or specialist-only restrictions.
From September 2026, new formulary decisions and resources such as guidelines will use the national formulary categories. Existing resources on the IMOC website that refer to the old colour-based formulary categories will be updated as they come up for review.
For an overview of the new Single National Formulary classifications, watch this short explainer video (generated with Synthesia).
