Development Journey

The diagram below provides a more detailed view of a typical Development Journey as a sequence of phases together with the key activities, support materials and/or services provided by the Ecosystem.

Note that not all activities are illustrated. For instance, Clinical Safety assessment and Information Governance (IG) assurance.

As shown in the figure above, a typical scenario involves the following steps:

• A Business Partner has an innovative idea related to the e-Referral Service
• The Partner visits the NHS e-RS API Web Portal and navigates to the Get Started section
• After reading the provided development information (which additionally covers other technical and non-technical documentation), they decide to gain hands-on experience of the API and register their interest
• Still on the Web Portal, they navigate to the API Console that allows them to Explore individual API operations (Subject to access provision)
• As they acquire a reasonable grasp of the API framework, they begin the development lifecycle (Design, Implement and System Test) of the new software product
• During this process, the Web Portal provides all the necessary Support including code samples, forums, and bug tracking features
• The Ecosystem will provide test environments for both System Tests as well as Integration Tests
• When the new software has been successfully integrated with an existing clinical system, subject to satisfying the relevant assurance process it will be certified as an NHS e-RS API Certified Product, after which it can be deployed in a live setting