Guidance and acceptance form for National Record Locator access

The National Record Locator (NRL) is an England wide index of pointers to patient information, to help inform clinical decisions across health and social care settings, including in urgent and emergency care.  The pointers confirm that there is a record available on the NRL for a patient.  

The NRL is an NHS England (NHSE) service set up under the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Establishment of systems: Digital Interoperability Platform Directions 2019.  

The organisation who holds the information (the Provider) will create a pointer on the NRL.  When a clinician from another organisation (the Consumer) becomes involved in the patient’s care or support, they will be able to see from the pointer what information can be accessed and how.  The information requested is then provided to the requestor in a ‘view only’ PDF format.

The pointer includes:

• patient NHS Number
• ODS code for the organisation who holds the information
• what type of information is held
• a URL to retrieve the information (this is a spine secure proxy for the patient record), and/or
• a URL to contact details for the organisation

View current organisation types who use the NRL. 

See a list of the types of documents and information that is currently available via NRL pointers.

View what organisations already use the NRL.

Download the Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA).

Your organisation must accept the NRL Data Sharing Agreement.

To publish pointers, your Electronic Patient Record (EPR) will need to integrate with the NRL. Your EPR supplier must sign the NRL Connection Agreement. This is provided via the Digital Onboarding Service once a supplier has completed section 3 and got their technical conformance certificate. Find out more about Supplier Digital Onboarding.

Your staff can then request information from an NRL pointer, either through your EPR or through the National Care Records Service, or if you only request information through the NRL (and you don’t publish pointers) you can request information through the NCRS.

1. View or download the Data Sharing Agreement (DSA).

2. Ask your IG lead and/or Data Protection Officer to review the DSA.  If they have any questions about the DSA they can email [email protected].

3. Ask your authorised representative (see below) to accept the DSA on behalf of your organisation. The DSA can be accepted online below. Alternatively, they can download the DSA and attach it to an email to [email protected] to confirm your organisation’s acceptance.

The following postholders can accept the DSA on behalf of your organisation: 

• Chief Executive
• Caldicott Guardian
• Chief Clinical Information Officer
• Medical Director
• Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO)
• any other postholder who has been authorised to sign or accept this type of documentation on behalf of your organisation.