Electronic patient records - integrating with national services
Learn how to integrate electronic patient records with our national services.
Content in progress
We are currently working on building this content, as part of our ongoing developer beta programme.
Overview
To deliver the capabilities required for electronic patient record (EPR) software in England, you'll need to integrate your software with various national services using our APIs.
This page explains which API to use for each use case.
API status
Some of our APIs are in development and in production, beta statuses, meaning:
- we give you extra help and support with integration
- you can contribute to the design
- there might be some breaking changes, but we work closely with you to manage them
Use cases and APIs
The following table summarises which API to use for each use case.
| Use case | Recommended API |
|---|---|
| Search for patient | Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API |
| Get patient's personal details | Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API |
| Update patient's personal details | Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API |
| Get patient's Summary Care Record | Summary Care Record - FHIR API |
| Update patient's Summary Care Record | Summary Care Record - FHIR API |
| Locate and access patient information shared by other healthcare organisations | National Record Locater - FHIR API |
| Prescribe medicines | Electronic Prescription Service - FHIR API |
| Manage referrals | e-Referral Service - FHIR API |
| Send booking and referral information between NHS service providers | |
| Share data between care settings | Message Exchange for Social Care and Health - FHIR API |
| Publish and subscribe to patient-centric healthcare event messages | |
| Access details of patients requiring reasonable adjustments | Reasonable Adjustment Flag - FHIR API |
| Access to child protection information by relevant NHS and local authority professionals | Child Protection – Information Sharing - HL7 V3 API |
| Share FGM information for children under 18 with relevant NHS healthcare workers | Female Genital Mutilation – Information Sharing - FHIR API |
| Notification of a birth and get NHS number | |
| Identify and authenticate healthcare workers | |
| Identify and authenticate patients |
Message Handling Service (MHS) adaptor
To access some of our HL7 V3 APIs, the best way to do so might be using the Message Handling Service (MHS) adaptor. You install the adaptor within your own environment which makes it easier to connect to the NHS Spine.
Last edited: 11 April 2023 5:35 pm