Terms and conditions: NHS Notify

The purpose of the NHS Notify service terms and conditions is to outline the criteria that: 

• a Connecting Party must be compliant with 

• are mandatory to be able to use the NHS Notify service 

These terms and conditions should be considered together with NHS Notify documentation, including the connection agreement.  

The Connecting Party should ensure that the End User Organisation have been provided with the NHS Notify acceptable use policy for their guidance and compliance. 

Complaints received or non-compliance reported to NHS England from use of the NHS Notify service will be investigated. NHS England reserve the right to act for non-compliance, such as refusing or suspending use of the NHS Notify service.

Where using the NHS App notifications and messaging (N and M) channel to communicate with patients, also refer to the NHS App N and M messaging guidelines.

These service terms and conditions are intended for the Connecting Party and outline the mandatory criteria that require compliance to be able to use the service.

The Connecting Party must:

• act under instruction of the End User Organisation in determining Recipients and content of and sending of communications to Recipients

• have in place measures or features to ensure that the End User Organisations meet the requirements of the service, for example by providing guidance and templates

• inform the service if you cannot meet the requirements of the service

Before use of the service, you must tell us if you cannot meet any service requirements and provide: 

• any mitigating actions 

• reason for exceptions 

We’ll assess your circumstances and work with you to resolve any problems. 

Contact NHS Notify if you have: 

• questions about how to be compliant with service requirements or how to follow guidance 

• any feedback or recommendations 

Communications are addressed and sent to only identified Recipients using their contact information held in the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) or if agreed by the NHS Notify Implementation Board, preferred contact information (known as PDS override) provided by the Connecting Party as determined by the End User Organisation. 

As part of the NHS Notify onboarding and integration process, the Connecting Party will be asked about the types of communications proposed to be issued from End User Organisations using the service, which requires NHS Notify agreement. 

NHS England advises using the NHS App as the initial communication channel for Recipients and implementing a contingency fallback mechanism by using another messaging channel available through the service, for example email, SMS text message, or letters. This is defined in the routing configuration. 

Time critical content is anything medically important, where there would be a clinical risk if the Recipient was either not informed or did not perform a requested action in a specific timeframe. NHS England does not guarantee how quickly communications will be processed and sent to Recipients. 

Examples of time critical content include, but are not limited to: 

• reminding a diabetic user to take their insulin 

• informing Recipients their appointment later that day has been cancelled, and they need to rearrange 

• requesting information, for example requesting photographs during a telephone appointment 

NHS England advises consideration when sending any communications with time-critical content due to potential limitations and considering a contingency fallback communication channel mechanism.

The Connecting Party must put in place reasonable measures with End User Organisations to:

• inform the service if there are errors with the communications or with the Recipients to be communicated with, to support any required actions by the service as necessary to try to support a resolution

The Connecting Party must:

• only send communications to Recipients that the End User Organisation has the legal basis to contact regarding the purpose of that specific communication and in accordance with the Acceptable Use Policy 

• provide the NHS Notify Transparency or Privacy Notice information to End User Organisations to enable the End User Organisation to update their Transparency or Privacy Notice

• have in place adequate contingency mechanisms between the Connecting Party and the End User Organisation to make sure care is not affected if a Recipient does not receive or act on a message using this service

Messaging should be optimised for the capabilities of the service and Recipient experience for the communication content and messaging channels used through the service including: 

• selecting the required template that is to be used for the appropriate messaging channel  

• consideration of content and what personal information to use and include when communicating with Recipients - you must comply with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 

• making messages usable, accessible and understandable for Recipients 

The Connecting Party must: 

• only use the appropriate service templating provided for the available messaging channels
• not include personal information in any URLs that may be issued as part of the message title or content and to not send messages with unsupported features, for example messages requesting free-text replies
• ensure, as far as is reasonably within its control, the content linked from messages is available for as long as it is relevant - this is especially critical where a click-through action directly relates to the individual’s care, such as archives of forms, documents, or test results
• take reasonable measures with the End User Organisation to ensure any downstream services linked to from messages are also accessible and usable
• ensure with the End User Organisation the message formatting and content is appropriate, accessible and usable

Content can be made accessible, usable, and understandable by: 

• following the NHS content style guide 

• structuring messages into paragraphs, with headings, including where possible sending full messages for digital channels, without truncating or summarising the content 

• correctly formatting hyperlinks, headings, emphasis 

• following the Public sector accessibility requirements, NHS Accessible information standard and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 

• testing content with its intended Recipients - for example, from NHS England user research activity, it was recognised that Recipients have difficulty reading long blocks of text, which led to them misunderstanding the message and instructions  

After the Connecting Party have completed Onboarding with the service, unless otherwise agreed with the service, the Connecting Party will send the End User Organisation’s communications to the service using NHS Notify API - NHS England Digital or NHS Notify MESH - NHS England Digital.

The Connecting Party must: 

• comply with the API or MESH documentation, for the integration method agreed with the service you will use

• develop your own change processes and undertake any development work required to ensure you maintain compliance with any changes that are made to the service and requirements or any associated APIs (including upgrades, new versions and deprecation) in accordance with the change management process as set out in the Connection Agreement

•  in issuing of communications to Recipients, you must provide the Service with: 

  • the routing configuration which specifies, and if required order preference, of the messaging channels required to send communications to Recipients, such as NHS App, email, SMS text message, and letters

  • the Recipients subject of receiving the communications, in the form of NHS numbers, and if required alternative Recipient contact information (as agreed with the service, see Section 2). If you do not provide preferred Recipient contact information, the service will use Recipient contact information obtained from the Personal Demographics Service

  • the messaging templates for each communication channel and the content of the communication, unless using the free-text templating (see Section 3)

• keep a record of each generated Sending Group ID against the initial communication sent to the service API and the corresponding message, which is used for auditing and traceability between organisations

Sending Group ID: the service creates a unique identifier (the ‘Sending Group ID’), for each message processed through the service API. The Sending Group ID is provided in the API response (HTTP status: 201). The Sending Group ID is used for tracking events for reporting and auditing purposes, and the Connecting Party must keep a record of it. 

In addition to definitions in the Connection Agreement for these Terms and Conditions, the following definitions will also apply. 

Recipients

The patient, individual or the public identified and targeted by End User Organisations to receive communications. 

Messaging channel

The format of channel used for sending communications, including but not limited to digital channels such as NHS App, email, SMS text message as well as physical communications including but not limited to letters, packages, leaflets and test kits (as delivered by a postal service). 

Notification

A form of communication issued to alert Recipients to the presence of a message in their NHS App messaging service inbox, such as a push notification. 

Routing configuration

The preference or ordering of the service messaging channels for sending of communications to Recipients.