The PBS public API displays the current PBS Schedule data and is freely available to everyone, no login is required. This API is rate-limited to one request per twenty seconds - this limit is shared amongst all concurrent users of the PBS public API. The past 12 months of PBS Schedule data can also be accessed from the public API.
Detailed information about the API, including definitions, examples, etc can be found by selecting the current API from the PBS API Catalogue.
The guidance below shows one of the methods to access the PBS API data via an online tool called Postman.
Disclaimer: The Department of Health and Aged Care is suggesting Postman as one of many options to access the PBS API. The Department has no affiliation with Postman and cannot guarantee the results produced using this product. The use of Postman is solely at your own risk.
1 Locate the API in Postman
Important: You will need to setup a free online account for postman before you can access the API, select ‘Sign Up for Free’ within Postman and follow the prompts. Once you have created your Postman account, click on the following link, this will direct you to the PBS Public data API collection (shown in Figure 1).
The left-hand side displays the endpoints available in the API. A description of each table can be found in the Data Dictionary available in the Resources section.
Figure 1: Screenshot of the PBS Public Data API collection in postman
2 Load the collection into your own workspace
In order to download the data from the API, you will need to 'fork' the collection which will create a duplicate of the collection within your own workspace in Postman. ‘Forking’ is a technical term for creating your own local copy of the API data. General information on forks in Postman can be found in the Postman user guidance.
Select the three dots next to PBS Public Data API (shown in Figure 2). Select 'Create a fork' from the drop-down that appears.
Figure 2: drop-down menu and 'Create a fork' options highlighted
Selecting 'Create a fork' will open a new 'Create Fork' tab in Postman. Here you will need to name your fork (name it something useful so you can find it later) and select which workspace you want to add the fork to (shown in Figure 3). Postman will set the fork label to your user name and the workspace to 'My Workspace' by default. Here you will also have the option to select 'Watch original collection'. Ticking this box will notify you when updates are made to the API or endpoints.
Figure 3: Create Fork tab in Postman with Fork Label, Workspace and Notifications
fields highlighted.
Select 'Fork Collection'. This will open a duplicate of the collection in your own space with the label you gave your fork (shown in Figure 4). Changes made in your workspace will not flow through to the original collection from which you made your fork.
Figure 4: Fork of PBS Public Data API with fork label highlighted.
3 Download data from the API
Navigate to the schedules endpoint and select 'Send' (shown in Figure 5). This will make sure that you are capturing data from the latest schedule. This step will only need to be conducted at the start of the month when the latest schedule is made available.
Then navigate to any of the other endpoints you wish to download (e.g. items, fees, etc,.) and select 'Send' as you did for Step 1. This will pull the data from the selected endpoint into the Response field at the bottom of Postman (shown in Figure 6).
To save this as a CSV, select the three dots in the upper right corner of the response section and select 'Save response to file' (shown in figure 6). The file name will save as 'response.csv' by default.
Repeat this process for all the other endpoints you want to download.
Once you have downloaded your endpoints/files you can exit Postman and import these files into a suitable software application, such as Excel.