Request a system-to-system account

A system-to-system account is required for making computer system calls to the NHS England Terminology Server. You may a request a system-to-system account by opening the system-to-system account request form.

Once you have a system-to-system account, we will create and provide client credentials, which will allow the Terminology Server to authenticate API calls made from your computer system.

For example, a system API call would be required if you wish to:

• syndicate content from the Terminology Server to an external system
• query content held on the Terminology Server to return results to an external system

You must complete individual System-to-System Account Request Forms for each system that you require to make API calls to the Terminology Server.

You'll need to consider whether you require either:

• Published content - content that has gone through a governance process, has been approved for publication and is available to use (subject to any specific content licenses).
• Unpublished content - content that is under development, it may not have completed a governance process, has been not approved for publication and is of limited use (subject to any specific content licenses).

We would expect only a minority of systems, where being used in conjunction with the development of content, to require access to unpublished content.

You will also need to read the system-to-system account agreement.

We will ask you to indicate your purpose for requesting access to the NHS England Terminology Server. These definitions will help you decide what type of access you require.

Syndication purposes

The system-to-system account will be configured to allow syndication of content to your system (such as an automated mechanism for taking FHIR resources from the NHS England Terminology Server to an external location).

An example would be to refresh your computer system when a national code system (such as SNOMED CT) is released.

Consumer purposes

The system-to-system account will be configured to allow read-only access to content on the Terminology Server.

Authoring purposes

The system-to-system account will be configured with both:

• read and write permissions to non-published content
• read-only permissions to published content

This type of account will be constrained to applying updates to content in authoring environments only.

We would expect only a minority of system, where being used in conjunction with the development of content, may require update permissions.

Requesting access to unpublished content will require increased scrutiny of the request. You will be asked to provide further information further down the form.

Direct care (run-time) purposes

Access will be given to an environment dedicated solely for Direct care (run-time) purposes.

The system-to-system account will be configured with read-only permissions to published content.