GP software - integrating with national services

Overview

To deliver the capabilities required for GP software in England, you'll need to integrate your software with various national services using our APIs and adaptors.

This page explains which API and adaptor to use for each use case.

APIs and adaptors

For some of our older, more complex APIs, we have built 'adaptors' - software components you deploy yourself that hide the complexity of the API.

The diagram shows how the APIs and adaptors work together to simplify your access to national services.

You only need to implement a simplified set of calls to the adaptor layer without needing to understand the underlying complexity of the API.

The diagram shows how the APIs and adaptors work together to simplify your access to NHS data services.

API and adaptor status

Some of our APIs and adaptors 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 or adaptor to use for each use case.

Use case	Recommended API or adaptor
Identify / authenticate end user	NHS Care Identity Service 2 (NHS CIS2) API
Search for patient	Personal Demographics Service (PDS) FHIR API
Get patient's personal details	Personal Demographics Service (PDS) FHIR API
Update patient's personal details	Personal Demographics Service (PDS) FHIR API
Manage patient registrations at your GP practice	NHAIS GP Links adaptor
Get accredited system details for another GP practice	Spine Directory Service (SDS) FHIR API
Transfer patient's medical records from / to another GP practice	GP2GP - HL7 V3 API
Respond to transfer request with patient's medical records from a GP practice using FHIR (sending adaptor)	GP2GP Sending Adaptor - FHIR API
Request and receive transfer of patient's medical records into a GP practice using FHIR (receiving adaptor)	GP2GP Receiving Adaptor - FHIR API
Book and manage appointments at another GP practice	GP Connect Appointment Management - FHIR API
Get patient's Summary Care Record	Summary Care Record (SCR) FHIR API
Update patient's Summary Care Record	Summary Care Record (SCR) FHIR API
Locate and access patient information shared by other healthcare organisations	National Record Locater - FHIR API
Get patient's health record at another GP practice	GP Connect Access Record Structured - FHIR API
Prescribe medicines	Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) FHIR API
Receive NHS 111 reports	NHS 111 Report adaptor
Manage referrals	e-Referral Service (e-RS) FHIR API
Receive pathology laboratory results	NHS Lab Results adaptor
Receive bowel cancer screening results	NHS Lab Results adaptor
Subscribe to and receive child health events	Digital Child Health - FHIR API
Report drug adverse reaction to MHRA	Electronic Yellow Card Reporting
Send data to the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) for planning and research	General Practice Extraction Service - MESH API
Other use cases	Details to follow

API authorisation

Some of our APIs are user-restricted - they require the end user to be authenticated.

For these APIs, we generally provide two options:

With combined authentication and authorisation, your software has some form of local authentication, and when the user needs authorisation to access our APIs, they authenticate strongly with NHS CIS2. This is sometimes called ‘step-up authentication’.

With separate authentication and authorisation, your software uses NHS CIS2 as the main form of authentication in your software. When the user needs authorisation to access our APIs, no further authentication is needed - it has already been done separately from authorisation.

For GP software, we recommend using separate authentication and authorisation because:

you need strong authentication for GP software anyway - NHS CIS2 gives you strong authentication without you having to build it yourself
you get full access to the authenticated user’s details and session
the user experience is better - the end user only needs to authenticate once, not twice

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.