PMIP began in the United Kingdom as the PMEP (Pathology Messaging Enabling Project) under the control of the NHS Information Authority and was supported by the Royal College of Pathologists (Dr Rick Jones), the Royal College of GPs (Dr Stephen Pill) and the British Medical Association.
By its final release, also in 2016, this PBCL subset had grown to offer 3352 uniquely codable tests that can be requested and resulted.
In the mid-1990s the NHS in the UK took the bold step of making this a universal feature of result delivery to general practice (GPs) and embarked on two linked projects to achieve this.
During the 12 months to July 2023, 1.88 Billion discrete new EPR items added to electronic patient records held by UK GPs were expressed using a code from within the PBCL, accompanied (usually) by a value and a unit of measurement.
The PMIP EDIFACT+PBCL system remains the prevailing technology supporting all GP laboratory requesting and resulting across the entire UK, but the strategic national intent since the early 2020s has been to migrate all live GP systems to FHIR and the Unified Test List,[2] a new and bespoke national extension of SNOMED CT offering greater detail.