A brief introduction to getting started with FHIR® APIs for national Spine services.
Important: This site is under active development by NHS Digital and is intended to provide all the technical resources you need to successfully develop the APIs. This project is being developed using an agile methodology so iterative updates to content will be added on a regular basis.
Introduction
Traditionally, the “Spine” has provided national services through a range of messaging standards including ebXML and SOAP messages. Many of these interfaces are being migrated to make use of HL7 FHIR standards. This documentation covers the common capabilities in the Spine for managing and processing national FHIR APIs.
There are two main classes of APIs that are covered by this guidance:
- FHIR APIs for national NHS Digital services such as Visitors and Migrants, National Opt-Out, the National Record Locator Service and Reasonable Adjustments
- FHIR APIs in external systems brokered through the Spine Secure Proxy such as GP Connect.
This specification covers the common functionality for all the above nationally defined APIs processed through the Spine.
Note: This specification does not cover FHIR ‘messaging’, or the transfer of FHIR ‘documents’, for information on national standards for this, refer to the ITK3 specifications and the Transfer of Care Specifications.