NHAIS GP Links adaptor

Use this adaptor to access the NHAIS GP Links API via an easy-to-use RESTful FHIR-compliant interface.

You can:

• register a new patient at a GP practice
• receive a de-registration (deduction) notification for a patient
• amend an existing patient's personal information, such as address (coming soon)

You cannot use this adaptor to get a patient's personal information from NHAIS.

This adaptor is a self-hosted component - you must deploy it within your own environment.

This adaptor is in beta.

We are currently in private beta, working with a limited number of partners to gain feedback and improve the service.

The latest version of the adaptor is v0.1.0.

This adaptor exposes a RESTful API. The API conforms to the FHIR global standard for health care data exchange.

Under the covers, the adaptor talks to the NHAIS GP Links API via MESH.

This adaptor is a self-hosted component - you must deploy it within your own environment.

The following diagram illustrates the adaptor:

You can deploy the adaptor where you like, for example in a public or private cloud environment.

To demonstrate what we think makes a secure, scalable, and available deployment, we have created two examples of cloud environment, based on AWS and Azure.

We have used Terraform for automated deployment.

For more details on the two exemplars and Terraform implementations, see the NHAIS GP Links adaptor GitHub repository.  

A Docker image for the adaptor can be found within Docker Hub along with the install guidelines:

•  NHAIS GP Links docker image

The adaptor presents an asynchronous interface which is used to make requests to MESH.

In order to perform end-to-end testing of this adaptor, you will require access to our test environment.

We provide several environments to test these adaptors against:

• Deployment environments can be used to perform initial test activities such as proof of concept where a Health & Social Care Network (HSCN) connection is not available.
• All other integration test activities are to be performed within a Path To Live environment. These activities include Development, Integration, Deployment and Non-functional tests.

To set up and configure Path to Live connectivity, see Path to Live environments.

NHAIS GP Links Adaptor will require access to the PCRM GP Links Converter test environment through a relevant MESH mailbox.  

For access to this environment, please email the NHS Digital Platforms Support Helpdesk with your contact details and the following specific requirements:

• A single Mesh mailbox
• The number of GP Practices linked to this mailbox (would advise at least 2)

For each GP practice we’d need to know:

• ODS Code
• GP Practice Trading Partner Code
• At least one HA Cipher / Trading Partner code for which the practice is linked
• GMC National Code and Local GP Code

For details on integration testing, see the integration testing section of our GitHub repository.

Contents include:

• pre-requisites for integration testing
• how to run local integration testing
• starting and testing the adaptor as docker containers
• running integration tests against mock components  

You need to get your software approved by us before it can go live with this adaptor. We call this onboarding. The onboarding process can sometimes be quite long, so it’s worth planning well ahead.

For more details, see onboarding.

Find out how to operate this adaptor in your own infrastructure in our GitHub repository. 

This covers areas such as log consumption, tooling, audit and other useful topics.

For details of the RESTful endpoints exposed by this adaptor, see the NHAIS GP Links adaptor API specification. This is an Open API Specification (OAS) file.

To see how these endpoints fit within an end-to-end process flow, see our sequence diagrams.