PharmA2A is an open, sector-specific protocol for direct orders between French community pharmacies and their suppliers, built on the Linux Foundation’s A2A standard. A2A defines how agents communicate; PharmA2A defines the information they exchange through five JSON-schema messages. Suppliers can publish their identity, terms and product catalogue; pharmacies send orders; suppliers acknowledge each line with availability, substitutions, delivery details and their own stated prices. Pharmacies can also follow up on existing orders and, with the pharmacist’s permission, share stock and sales information about a supplier’s products. Orders use a customer-account reference and are sent once.
The protocol’s central safeguards are that pharmacy economic data and patient data never travel in messages, unstated fields remain blank, and suppliers alone can confirm their commitments. Communication is initiated by the pharmacy, not pushed by suppliers. The repository includes the specification, schemas, validation tools, a sample supplier agent, a pharmacy command-line demo and an email bridge for suppliers without compatible software; the bridge can turn email replies into acknowledgements, optionally using a language model. It is already used by SyderaAI’s pharmacy purchasing agent, which currently operates supplier email bridges and can switch to a supplier’s own agent by changing its URL. The dictionary is public domain and implementations are freely permitted, while the PharmA2A name is trademarked.
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