Personal Demographics Service MESH

Use this message integration to search the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) for patient details, using the MESH UI.

The PDS MESH service is for organisations that do not want to write their own software, like NHS trusts or local authorities.

It is not intended for software integration - use the PDS FHIR API instead.

It is a batch message integration.  It does not expect an immediate response from PDS.

It requires PDS access approval and a MESH mailbox set up before you can use it.

You can:

• create a file containing a trace request
• send the trace request to PDS
• check for replies and download the response

For how to use PDS MESH, see Using the PDS MESH service with the MESH user interface.

This message integration can only be used where there is a legal basis to do so. Make sure you have a valid use case before you go too far with your development. To do this, make a PDS access request.

You must do this before you can go live. 

Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API: use this API to search for patients, retrieve patients by NHS number and update patients

This message integration is in production.

This integration uses MESH, which is a silver service, meaning it is operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year but only supported during business hours (8am to 6pm), Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays.

For more details, see service levels.

This is an asynchronous messaging integration.

Messages are sent and received via MESH.

Message payloads are CSV files.

This message integration is available on the internet and on the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN).

This message integration uses MESH and the MESH UI which requires a MESH mailbox set up as an 'Initiator of the workflow group "Master Patient Tracing System"'.

There are no test environments.

You cannot integrate your software with this service.

You must have an approved PDS access request before you can use it.

For a full list of interactions for this message integration, see the relevant data dictionary.