Interface mechanisms guidance

In January 2020 the Digital Care Services (DCS) and GP IT Futures Lot 1 Framework replaced GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC).

Under DCS, foundation clinical system suppliers, as provider suppliers, must provide third party consumer suppliers with the ability to consume primary care data from their clinical systems if use cases support this and they have satisfied specific assurance criteria.

This is achieved via 4 suites of APIs:

1. Patient
2. Transaction
3. Bulk
4. Partner (EMIS only currently)

The functionality offered by each foundation system provider differs. Work is ongoing to ensure that the standards laid down within the DCS will be met by all foundation system providers. Technical specifications for the APIs will be made available once the consumer suppliers application to pair has been assessed for feasibility and accepted by the provider. These are referred to as the Pairing Integration Pack (PIP).

The following only provides guidance to those consumer system suppliers wishing to utilise the IM1 APIs offered under the DCS by the 3 foundation system providers (that is, EMIS, TPP).

For specific queries regarding the published standards and the Buying Catalogue, please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

This API provides end users (patients or their authorised representatives) with access to functionality as specified by the patient’s GP practice.

To set up an account on a consuming system, the user / patient must obtain linkage details from the GP practice. These will be input into the consuming system to enable the account to be successfully linked with their clinical record. If the consuming system uses NHS login, the consuming system must provide the functionality to allow both linkage scenarios.

The end user can:

• view available appointments
• book an appointment
• amend or cancel an appointment
• view their repeat medication
• request a repeat prescription
• amend or cancel prescription request
• view their medical record
• communicate with the practice

This API supports products chosen by the practice to be used within or on behalf of the practice. It provides real-time update and retrieval of patient data.

A consumer component may need to be installed on the local practice machine to enable interaction with the clinical system client. This may be one machine within the practice to act as a gateway or on individual machines for individual use.

This API should provide the following functionality:

• search patient
• retrieve and update patient demographics
• retrieve full medical record
• file data to patient record
• retrieve a consultation record
• create a new consultation record
• add document / attachment to consultation record
• retrieve documents from patient record
• file documents into patient record
• retrieve an attachment from the patient’s medical record
• retrieve a list of all the attachments residing in the patient’s medical record
• retrieve a list of patients whose registration details have changed
• retrieve the list of active users from a given organisation
• delete data from a patient’s record
• retrieve appointment slots 
• diary information
• query details of free slots in the appointment book
• extract CSV files

Appointment functionality may only be available via GP Connect. Please refer to the provider supplier PIP for further information.

This API provides access to the bulk clinical data held within provider systems. In addition to patient clinical data, there may be data available re the users of the clinical system. As the data controller, GP practices must provide consent for this extract to be made available to each consumer and data sharing agreements will be required.

Consumers will specify which data tables they require and will receive a full data extract of these upon initial set up. Daily deltas will be provided from then on. Actions by either the consumer or provider may trigger a full extract (for example, adding organisations or columns to tables). Consumers may request a further full extract, but the timing will be at the discretion of the provider. Consumer suppliers can request, daily, weekly or monthly extracts.

Mechanisms for delivery / retrieval of extracts depends upon the provider.

The data items extracted by the providers varies. All data items available are listed within the PIP.

EMIS have made their Partner API available to consumers via IM1commercial model. This is similar to their Transaction API but the functionality available is different. This is only applicable with the EMIS Web GP module and to practices based within England. EMIS Community module is not available via IM1at this moment in time.

This API should provide the following functionality: 

• a single patient demographic and medical record
• a list of patients (for example, for finding or searching for patients)
• a list of patients with appointments booked
• a list if patients to update and age / sex register output
• organisation information (information about the organisation or users)
• a list of patient registration details for patients that have changed since the last query
• appointment and appointment configuration information
• retrieve documents from patient record
• file documents into patient record
• retrieve an attachment from the patient’s medical record
• retrieve a list of all the attachments residing in the patient’s medical record

The information is made available via a set of COM interfaces. Further details around the capabilities of the APIs can be found in the principal supplier’s PIP document. 

You can contact the following teams if you need any further information: