Vaccination

Use these integrations to provide vaccination event information to us.

You can send us information relating to the following vaccinations:

• coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations
• seasonal flu vaccinations
• extended attribute data for COVID-19 and flu
• measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)
• respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)
• human papillomavirus (HPV)
• Pertussis

From the autumn term of the school year 25/26 (start dates to be confirmed), you will also be able to send us:

• meningococcal (MenACWY)
• diphtheria, tetanus and polio vaccine (Td/IPV)

These integrations specify the flow of vaccination-related information from healthcare settings including:

• hospital hubs: NHS providers vaccinating on site

• vaccination centres: vaccination sites open to the public (with prior booking) 
• local vaccination services: this includes the following sub-types: 
  • General Practices (GPs) 
  • community pharmacies 
  • roving residential (i.e. care home) 
  • roving housebound (i.e. visiting patients at home) 
  • outreach services 
  • detained estates – includes prisons
  • Primary Care Networks (PCNs) 

• schools: vaccinations administered via NHS School Age Immunisation Service (SAIS) 

These integrations use MESH to send and receive pipe-delimited (|) and not-sign-delimited (¬) files.

For more details on how to interact with end users to collect vaccination event information safely, see the functional specifications under 'Additional guidance'.

For FHIR standards relating to the flow of information directly back to the patient's GP, see Digital Medicine - FHIR.

For FHIR standards relating to the flow of information to other care providers such as Child Health, see Vaccination Events - FHIR.

These integrations 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, by contacting us.

You must do this before you can go live (see ‘Onboarding’ below). 

Existing suppliers:

The following APIs and integrations are also related to these integrations :

• Vaccination Events - FHIR - use this to send and receive messages about changes to a patient's vaccination details.
• Digital Medicine - FHIR - use this to notify a patient's registered GP practice of care services provided by a pharmacy, such as immunisation.

New suppliers:

• Use the FHIR Immunisation API which provides information on how vaccination event shall be shared, consumed and updated. All new suppliers will be required to implement FHIR interactions as the .csv data sharing arrangement are being withdrawn for existing suppliers and data consumers.

These integrations are in production.

These integrations 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.

These integrations consist of delimited files you send to us over MESH.

Some are pipe-delimited (|), others are not-sign-delimited (¬) files. For details, see the individual specification.

These integrations are available on the internet and on the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN).

For more details see Network access for APIs.

These integrations use MESH which is an application-restricted API.

These integrations do not perform any end user authentication or authorisation checks. Rather, the calling system is expected to perform them. 

These integrations use MESH.

As a developer, you are most likely to want to connect to MESH using either the MESH client or the MESH API.

For more details about using the MESH client, see MESH client.

For the MESH API, there are several independent, externally accessible instances of MESH you can use for testing. For full details, see MESH API - Environments and testing.

You must get your software onboarded before it can go live.

For more details, contact us at [email protected].