Spine
Spine supports the IT infrastructure for health and social care in England, Wales and Isle of Man, joining together over 44,000 healthcare IT systems in 26,000 organisations.
About this service
Spine provides high-performance secure messaging that facilitates data exchange between systems and provides a hosting platform for critical national services, including:
- enables critical services to provide frontline care by providing real-time patient data
- supports health and social care IT infrastructure in England, Wales and Isle of Man
- provides a scalable cloud-based platform that makes use of modern technologies and open standards
Who the service is for
Spine is available for all systems that are involved in health and care settings that need to connect and share information across the NHS and access specific services hosted on the platform.
What information is available
The information held in Spine includes:
- clinical care information used by National Care Records Service (NCRS)
- information to identify individuals accessed through Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
- information around medication used by Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
- patient information such as current medication and allergies from Summary Care Record (SCR)
- GP practice clinical information shared through GP Connect
Examples of use
NHS Spine enables healthcare systems to rapidly access, update and exchange critical patient information via accessing a number of connected APIs and front end systems.
Example of use include:
- pharmacists in pharmacies login to the Prescription Tracker UI (or their local system) via EPS and Spine to access prescription history information
- GPs access Spine allowing them to update a patient's demographics information or upload the latest summary of the patient's GP information
-
paramedics login to Spine via NCRS (or their local system) to access patient data such as demographics and summary care records
Security and trust are paramount when dealing with highly sensitive clinical data.
Status, service level and current usage
The current service (Spine ii) is live and has been active since August 2014.
Spine is a platinum service which means it is available and supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
It currently handles over 1.3 billion messages a month, translating to an average daily volume of 43 million messages per day.
A number of the features of the Spine service have been or are being replaced by a suite of newer dedicated services which provide a modern platform developed and over time we expect the service to reduce in both functionality and scale.
The first version of Spine (Spine i) went live in June 2004.
How to access this service
Most users access Spine through clinical systems or through the Spine portal.
New ways are being developed to help systems suppliers design IT systems for health and care which can integrate with Spine or access important patient information.
Contact us
The following table shows how to contact us about this service.
| Enquiry | Point of contact |
|---|---|
| Live service incident / General enquiries about the service |
National Service Desk Email: [email protected] or Report via our customer portal Telephone: 0300 303 5035 |
| Strategic direction of the service |
Shan Rahulan Email: [email protected] |
| Subject access requests |
Medical records If you want to see copies of your medical records, you should ask your GP or the health setting that provided your care or treatment. Learn more about how to access your health records. Request to see data we hold about you You have the legal right to request a copy of the information we hold about you, in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
|
| Senior responsible officer (SRO) |
Shan Rahulan Email: [email protected]
|
Further information
Access patients' personal information, such as name, address, date of birth, related people, registered GP, nominated pharmacy and NHS number using the FHIR version of the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) API.
These are the APIs and API standards which are currently available, or in development, from NHS England.
Information for users of NHS England's Path to Live testing and training environments.
Computer systems which access NHS England services through Spine have to meet certain technical standards. The Warrantied Environment Specification (WES) defines the client environments that we support and applications requiring a smartcard or other approved authenticator to be aligned with the terms and conditions.
Publish and receive patient-related state changes from a single centralised system.
Message Exchange for Social Care and Health (MESH) provides the ability to share data directly between health and care organisations and is the nationally recognised mechanism for this method of data sharing.
This is an online community that supports timely integration with NHS products and services, with an added advantage to get resolutions from peers with similar experiences.
Last edited: 6 August 2025 5:27 pm