@pipeworx/mhra-uk

UK medicines register — the MHRA products database behind products.mhra.gov.uk. Post-Brexit the EMA register no longer covers the UK, so this is the UK authorisation surface.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.

What this register actually is

It is an index of documents — Summaries of Product Characteristics, patient information leaflets and public assessment reports, as PDFs — with metadata about each. It is not a register of structured product records. There is no indication field, no pathway field and no authorisation-status field in it.

That shapes every tool here. mhra_product returns the document metadata and the authoritative PDF URL rather than a summary of the document, because the authorised indication text is written in section 4.1 of the SmPC and nowhere else. authorisation_status is always unknown, with a note saying why: the only status-shaped field is release_state, which is Y on all 79,112 released documents and means "published", not "currently authorised". Reporting it as authorisation status would be a guess wearing a field name.

Tools

• mhra_search(query, doc_type?, territory?, limit?, offset?) — by product, brand or active substance. One row per document.
• mhra_product(pl_number) — every document for one licence, grouped by type. Accepts PL 29831/0798, PL29831/0798, PL298310798 and the PLGB / PLNI forms.
• mhra_recent_changes(since, doc_type?, limit?) — documents added or revised since a date, newest first. Idempotent on replay.
• mhra_snapshot() — total count, counts per document type, newest document date, and the paging recipe. Counts, never documents.

Licence prefixes are not spellings of each other

PL is UK-wide, PLGB is Great Britain only, PLNI is Northern Ireland only. Measured 2026-09-07: UK 64,126 documents, GB 8,428, NI 48. Treating them as interchangeable answers "is this authorised in the UK?" with a licence that may cover a small fraction of it.

Enumeration

There is no bulk download. Walk the register with mhra_search({query: "*", limit: 50, offset: N}), stepping offset by 50. mhra_snapshot() returns the current total so you know when to stop.

recent_changes reports new and changed, NOT withdrawn

The register records documents, and a withdrawal is not published as an event. covers on every response says so. Do not read an absence as a withdrawal.

Fragility worth knowing

Search runs on Azure Cognitive Search using MHRA's own client key — the one shipped to every browser that loads products.mhra.gov.uk. No account, payment or agreement stands between anyone and this data. But if MHRA rotates that key this pack stops working, and the fix is to read the current one out of their public bundle again. medicines.api.mhra.gov.uk/graphql also appears in their bundle and 503s on every request; do not build on it.

created is sortable but not filterable on this index, which is why recent_changes orders newest-first and stops at the cutoff rather than pushing a date filter upstream.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mhra-uk": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mhra-uk/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mhra-uk/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/mhra_search \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"query":"atorvastatin"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/mhra_search. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mhra-uk": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-mhra-uk"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-mhra-uk

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Mhra Uk data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT