Developer community

The NHS England developer community is an open forum for asking and answering questions about integrating with our APIs and services.

As a third party integrator, you can:

• receive guidance to aid integration with NHS England products and services through engagement with peers and dedicated NHSE resolver teams
• keep up to date with the latest news on NHS England API developments, updates and industry trends
• create new topics or contribute to existing threads to build valuable knowledge resources
• engage in discussions on a wide range of service topics, access diverse perspectives and insights
• make connections with peers engaged in developing solutions to drive positive health outcomes for patients
• receive recognition for your contributions with tiered statuses

The NHS England developer community is for anyone with a vested interest in health and care technology, especially regarding API integration.

In particular:

• people who need to integrate with our national APIs and services
• people who own those APIs and services

The benefits of the NHS England developer community include:

For people integrating with our national APIs and services

• through engagement, community members can expand their professional network, build relationships and foster a sense of community within the API ecosystem
• by consistently engaging in meaningful conversations, sharing insights, and helping others, community members can establish themselves as valuable contributors and enhance their professional reputation within the API community
• the community serves as a central hub for sharing knowledge, best practices, insights, learning and developing technical expertise related to the APIs
• by asking questions, community members can tap into a diverse pool of perspectives and gain insights they may not have considered before. This can lead to innovative approaches, alternative solutions, or fresh ideas that enhance their API usage.

For people who own those APIs and services

• Improve support efficiency by enabling product teams to address commonly asked questions openly ultimately saving time and effort
• the interactive support system can help provide engaging avenues for assistance, resolve issues, help onboarding or troubleshoot more efficiently whilst foster a collaborative support ecosystem
• product teams can leverage a community to gather valuable feedback from their developer community, this can influence API providers to enhance their offerings, address issues, and prioritize consumer needs, ultimately leading to a better API experience for everyone

The NHS England developer community is a standard online forum. It uses a best-of-breed open source forum software product, and is hosted in the cloud.

We aim to build an engaged community supported by a comprehensive knowledge base.

The community will grow with active participation from its members.

For people integrating with our national APIs and services

• visitors can search for content, browse categories and read posts
• members gain the advantage of being able to engage with and participate in the community
• services are ordered into categories (e.g. MESH), with each category containing discussion threads, a topic of conversation, these conversations contribute to the knowledge contained in the community
• a free format search, order and filtering help members navigate the community
• ongoing engagement in the community builds the contributors reputation, recognised through trust levels
• private messaging allows community members to communicate with each other outside of the wider public discussion, valuable where broader sharing would not be preferred

For people who own those APIs and services

• it is expected that product teams will actively participate, subscribe to categories and help to foster a culture of shared learning
• product teams should identify a lead to manage engagement and ensure team members will take responsibility for responding to enquiries and providing API updates
• each product will need a category in order to subscribe to notifications, helping to better manage their time in the community
• members can set up notifications and receive alerts, ensuring they never miss a new post or reply to a topics of interest
• product teams should encourage end-users to use the 'like' button as a means of expressing their satisfaction for support received
• product teams should click the 'resolved tick' for posts that are resolved for end users

For people integrating with our national APIs and services

1. Sign up to NHS England developer community with name, email, password and job role.
2. Enrich your profile.
3. Find categories you are interested in.
4. Start engaging with the community.

For people who own those APIs and services

1. We recommend you identify a member of your team who will take responsibility for routinely checking/being notified by the community for user queries and/or inquiries (even though every member of the team should be subscribed to your product category.
2. Sign up to NHS England developer community with name, email, password and job role.
3. You will have to find your category on the community line-up - this will be your product name, for example MESH.
4. If you do not find your category, send a personal message or DM requesting the moderators to set up a new one.
5. Subscribe to your category notification.
6. Create the relevant tags for your product/category.
7. Subscribe to E-mail notifications for that category and/or tags.
8. Share a link to your category with end-users via email, slack and other communication channels.

For more details, see the guidance in our API producer zone. You'll need an NHS England Confluence account to access this.