NHS MPI Adapter for QuickFHIR
1.0.0 - draft

NHS MPI Adapter for QuickFHIR - Local Development build (v1.0.0). See the Directory of published versions

Implementation

Introduction

The following resources provide additional information to support use of the API.

HL7 FHIR

The adapter provides health care data exchange via a standard HL7 FHIR REST API.

Capability statement

The Capability Statement for the adapter provides formal documentation of the set of capabilities (behaviors) of the adapter when deployed as a FHIR Server.

This can also be retrieved at runtime using the standard capabilities interaction.

SearchParameters

The adapter supports FHIR search using a defined set of Search Parameters.

Postman

Postman is a collaboration platform for API development.

The Postman collection can be used to evaluate the API capabilities. Given access to a QuickFHIR Cell, Postman can be used to exercise the FHIR endpoint.

Sample data

Development instances use a demonstration service provided by NHS Digital. NHS Digital provide a spreadsheet of Sample PDS data to support development.

Common use cases

Find a patient

To retrieve a set of patients based on demographic information use the search interaction on the Patient resource.

For example:

GET 'https://5eb36d9c1de04d5390.develop.eu-west-2.quickfhir.cloud/fhir/Patient?identifier=https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number%7C4577390825&birthdate=1970-03-13'

Search parameters:

Search Parameter Format
identifier https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number | NHS Number
birthdate yyyy-mm-dd
family min 2 chars, no max
given min 2 chars, no max
gender male, female, other, unknown
address-postalcode UK Format Post Code e.g NE35 9PE

The search must include at least one of the following combinations of parameters:

  • identifier, birthdate
  • birthdate, family, gender

Family and given search parameters are searched for as a string value, and therefore symbols are permitted in these search parameters, but have no special function e.g an asterisk (*) will NOT act as a wildcard.

The result will be a Bundle of Patient resources matching the search parameters. It may include further information about the result of the search in an OperationOutcome resource.

Where an exact match to the criteria is not made the following outcome will be returned:

  • DEMOG-0001: No match found

The search is limited to return either 0 or 1 patients so that it cannot easily be used to ‘fish’ for personal information. In these cases, additional information may be provided to refine the search and a new request submitted. Where multiple results are found the following outcome will be returned:

  • DEMOG-0007: Multiple Matches

No patient details will be provide for multiple matches.

The search may also return information about inconsistencies within the returned data:

  • DEMOG-0017: Superceding NHS Number returned
  • DEMOG-0022: NHS Number of response record has been invalidated
  • DEMOG-0040: NHS Number is not verified
  • DEMOG-0042: NHS Number is not a new style number

Whilst these are relatively uncommon scenarios, it is important that the end user is notified so that appropriate back-office processes can be triggered to amend data quality.

Data Discrepancies

Any data returned by the adapter that is identified by the consuming organisation as being incorrect should be reported to NHS Digital National Back Office (NBO)