NHS Digital

Our experts explain how we are using technology and data to improve health and care.

NHS Digital Tech Talk

Our experts explain how we are using technology and data to improve health and care.

How we’re modernising electronic prescribing

Most prescriptions are still paper-based in secondary care. Business analyst Andy Harrison describes the technical groundwork we’ve laid to allow these settings to go digital.

Andy Harrison

Business Analyst, Interoperability Standards team,

Our new approach to migrating Spine to the cloud

Mark Burton, Lead Delivery Manager for the Spine Futures programme, explains why we’re accelerating the migration of Spine services into the cloud and why we need NHS organisations and healthcare suppliers to support the move.

Mark Burton

Lead Delivery Manager - Spine Core / Spine Futures,

What does good look like for APIs?

Matthew Firth describes our best practice policies around APIs – and how the most important one is not about the technical aspects of the work.

Matthew Firth

Business Analyst,

Our API Developer Community is growing

Thasmim Ali, Product Owner of our API Developer Community, talks about how we’ve improved support for teams integrating with our products and services – and outlines our next steps.

Thasmim Ali

Product Owner,

Abstract image with graphics showing computer screens and shapes

What we have learned about retiring APIs

Business analyst Matthew Firth gives an update on what NHS Digital has been doing to progress the API ‘sunsetting’ strategy to retire some of our APIs over the last year.

Matthew Firth

Business Analyst,

How we're supporting product teams

Making it easier to get help and support is a guiding principle for our API Management (APIM) team. Ernest Kissiedu, a business analyst in the team, explains the new approach to supporting software developers working in health and care.

Ernest Kissiedu

Business Analyst,

A female uses a desktop computer to look at data on a screen

Discovering data standards together

Bharat Sharma, Senior Product Manager in the Standards and Interoperability team at NHS England, explains what they are doing to improve access to standards across the NHS

Bharat Sharma

Senior Product Manager,

A collage of street signs set against a map

Why we're opening up our API and integration catalogue

Business analyst Matthew Firth talks about the expansion of NHS Digital’s application programming interface (API) and integration catalogue which, for the first time, will now include external APIs.

Matthew Firth

Business Analyst,

Richard Taylforth is pictured at his desk

6 things we learned from the COVID-19 home testing rollout

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the home testing service enabled millions to order PCR tests and rapid lateral flow tests to their homes. Richard Taylforth, a Delivery Manager who worked on the service, explains how we did it.

Richard Taylforth

Delivery Manager,

Alex Lord is sat at his laptop in the library at NHS Digital's Leeds office

Onboarding shouldn't be an afterthought

Alex Lord, Lead Product Owner for the Digital Onboarding Service at NHS Digital, explains why we are investing in digitalising the onboarding journey for developers of healthcare software.

Alex Lord

Lead Product Owner for the Digital Onboarding Service,

Tony Heap, Lead Product Owner for API management, leans against a whiteboard at NHS Digital's Leeds office

Making integration easier for people building healthcare software

Tony Heap, Lead Product Owner for API management at NHS Digital, explains how our new API platform can create a more competitive marketplace for healthcare systems.

Tony Heap

Lead Product Owner,

What is ‘integration in a box’?

We want to make it as easy as possible for suppliers to integrate their services with the NHS App. Dan Collins, Senior Product Manager at NHS Digital, explains some new self-serve tools we think will help.

Dan Collins

Senior Product Manager,

Healthcare worker performing a COVID-19 test to a man inside a vehicle.

How we stealthily migrated the COVID-19 National Testing Service

At the height of the pandemic, NHS Digital took the decision to migrate the COVID-19 National Testing Service to a new platform. Mark Byrne, Head of Technology, explains how the team succeeded in doing this while processing about 1 million test results per day – without anyone really noticing.

Mark Byrne

Head of Technology,

Sam Perera, API Delivery Manager, is seen working from home.

Improving access to our API developer and integration hub

Sam Perera, API Delivery Manager at NHS Digital, explains how we are making it easier to use our APIs.

Sam Perera

API Delivery Manager,

Collage image showing people giving feedback on different devices.

5 ways to get real feedback from software developers

Mick Schonhut, Technical Writer at NHS Digital, explains how we put user needs at the centre of our API documentation.

Mick Schonhut

Technical Writer,

Dr Munish Jokhani working at his desk at home.

What happens when we ‘sunset’ our APIs?

Dr Munish Jokhani, Assurance Lead for API Management at NHS Digital explains how we retire our APIs and how developers can get involved in the process.

Munish Jokhani

Assurance Lead for API Management,

People queue outside a mass vaccination centre for those aged 18 and over at a London stadium.

Dealing with our Glastonbury

Rob Sinclair, Lead Architect for the NHS website, gives a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how the National Booking Service for COVID-19 vaccinations is designed to deal with major peaks in demand.

Rob Sinclair

Lead Architect,

Catching patients before COVID-19 bites

Oximetry @home allows COVID-19 patients to stay at home and get the care they need safely. Jonathan Telfer, Senior Technical Architect at NHS Digital, explains the approach and the data architecture behind it.

Jonathan Telfer

Senior Technical Architect,

An image of someone getting a COVID 19 vaccination

The tech behind the jab

Richard McEwan, Lead Technical Architect, explains the infrastructure behind one of the world’s largest national COVID-19 vaccination programmes and how it has helped over 35 million people and counting get their life-saving jabs.

Richard McEwan

Lead Technical Architect,

Finding the vulnerable before COVID does

When the University of Oxford developed a model to predict those at higher risk of dying from COVID-19, we had a challenge: to securely integrate this risk assessment tool into our data systems to identify exactly who these people were. Lee Gathercole, Technical Architect, explains how we did it.

Lee Gathercole

Technical Architect,

Collage image of person typing code into a computer connected with dotted lines to someone holding a smartphone.

Lessons from the coalface of API-first design

Our ‘API-first’ approach is making it easier for developers, suppliers and partners to connect to our platforms and services. Brian Diggle, Technical Architect at NHS Digital, gives a behind-the-scenes look at how this approach works in practice.

Brian Diggle

Technical Architect,

Andrew Blundell sitting at his desk at home.

Dr Seuss and engineering in a pandemic

Andrew Blundell, Head of Software Engineering in NHS Digital’s Product Development directorate, explains why we must split apart large systems into smaller, loosely coupled components to cope with a wild and unpredictable world – and how the NHS Digital software engineering quality framework helps us.

Andrew Blundell

Head of Software Engineering,

The author, Ash Raines, at his workstation at home.

5 key themes for the future of the NHS Spine

Earlier this year, we talked to our strategic partners across the public and private sectors about how we can evolve our Spine platform to meet the needs of a future health and care system. Ash Raines, Head of Delivery for the Platforms Directorate, shares the key themes and insights we’ve learned.

Ash Raines

Head of Delivery,

Little girl touching her grandparent's hands through a window.

How we created the Shielded Patient List

Mark Reynolds, Chief Technology Officer at NHS Digital, explains the architecture behind the NHS Shielded Patient List, which is helping to protect the most vulnerable members of society during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mark Reynolds

Chief Technology Officer,

Making it easier to connect to our platforms and services

Tony Heap, Lead Product Owner for API Management at NHS Digital, explains how our new API Platform will create more opportunities to improve digital health and care services

Tony Heap

Lead Product Owner,

Lead architect Lee Gathercole sits at his computer

Creating a self isolation note in response to the pandemic

Setting up a way to quickly obtain a self isolation note was a key step to support the coronavirus (COVID-19) response. This service enables people who were suffering symptoms or who were living with someone suffering symptoms to present a note to their employer as evidence that they needed to stay at home.

Lee Gathercole

Technical Architect,

Alistair Bullward working from home with his headset on.

COVID-19 data dashboards: From prototypes to a solution serving thousands in weeks

Alistair Bullward, Product Owner for Open Data and Data Visualisation, explains how we moved swiftly to provide a robust, mature data service to help with the coronavirus response.

Alistair Bullward

Head of Service (Data Product), NHS England