Part of National Event Management Service (NEMS) onboarding guide for digital child health

NEMS functionality

Overview

An approved organisation may be a NEMS publisher, subscriber or both, the functionality to be developed is summarised as

NEMS Subscription API

creation and deletion of both generic and explicit subscriptions
auditing of the management of subscriptions
verification of NHS number prior to subscription creation
conformance to the Information Governance requirements

NEMS publisher

auditing of the published messages
verification of NHS number prior to publishing
conformance to the specific event construction and content
conformance to the Information Governance requirements

The NEMS technical specification provides further detail and the requirements, it is located on the Health Developer Network: National Event Management Service technical specification.

Event messaging

Each event message which passes through NEMS carries a standard set of event information to allow the receiver of the message to identify:

the patient who is the focus of the event
information about the provider who published the event message, including contact details for issues with the event message
information about the event that occurred
information to allow receivers to perform message sequencing

Generic event messages are designed and intended for reuse across different organisations and care settings.

Learn more about this type of events and subscriptions.

Event maturity

The maturity of an event message is indicated in this table, event maturity labels are intended to indicate the expected stability of the event messages.

Event maturity	Description
Alpha	Early proposal for an event message, high risk of change.
Beta	The event design has been agreed and is intended to become the release candidate but has not been proved through development and testing, therefore there is a risk that changes may be required.
Release candidate	The event has been through a development and testing phase, followed by a successful Deployment Verification Period (DVP, the agreed period of stability, in live use. The event message should not change unless as a result of a live issue.
Released	Event is being widely used and is unlikely to change, unless a change is required as a result of a live issue.

Supported generic event messages

These are generic event messages supported by the NEMS. The latest list of events supported by NEMS and the respective event maturity status is available on the API Specification document

Digital child health event messages

These event messages are supported by the NEMS but have been defined by Digital Child Health. Find the complete list of event messages.

Publishing

This process shows the high level business process for the publishing of events to the National Events Management service.

image representing how events are published through NEMS.

What this image shows

1. The health or social care professional records data in the local system.

2. This generates and event which is sent to NEMS.

3. NHS Digital validates and processes the event.

4. The event is published. If the the event isn't successful the publishing organisation is notified of the failure to publish it.

The subscribing organisation receives and processes the event in their local system

The event consumer can view the event.

Subscribing

This process shows the high-level business process for subscribing to events from the National Event Management service.

Subscription management

Different types of subscriptions supported by NEMS:

explicit subscriptions
rule based (generic) subscriptions
multiple matched subscriptions

To receive event messages a consumer will need to subscribe to events they want to receive.

Learn more about the flow of event messages from publishers to subscribers.

Last edited: 17 January 2022 9:43 am