Introduction

GP Connect aims to support better clinical care by opening up allows authorised clinical staff to share and view GP Practice clinical information and data held within GP Practice IT systems for use across health and social care. 

The first phase of GP Connect provides access to and enables the following:

1. A patient's care record as an HTML view (Access Record HTML)
2. Medications and Allergies section of a patient's care record in clinically coded and structured Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) format (Access Record Structured)
3. The ability for a third-party organisation to directly book and manage Appointments in a GP practice (Appointments Management)
4. The ability to ‘writeback’ or send a document e.g. consultation update, to a GP Practice for attachment to a patient’s record (GP Connect Messaging Send Document)

A demonstrator application of between IT systems, quickly and efficiently.

The service makes Patient medical information available to all appropriate Clinicians when and where they need it to support direct Patient care, leading to improvements in both care and outcomes.

GP Connect currently includes the following Standards:

1. Access Record HTML: This enables a read only view of the Patient’s GP electronic Patient Record held at the GP Practice.

2. Appointment Management: This enables the management of GP Practice Appointments between different systems.

3. Access Record Structured: This enables structured information to be retrieved from the electronic patient record at the GP Practice. Currently live access only includes Medications and Allergies information but work to expand out to cover the full GP Clinical Record is in delivery.

4. Send Document: This capability provides a simple and standardised means of sending a document to a GP Practice system.

5. Update Record: This capability provides the ability to send and receive structured data.

A demonstrator application of the GP Connect FHIR APIs is available, as is additional information at NHS Digital's GP s GP Connect homepage.

Compliance, Assurance and Testing

To achieve GP Connect compliance suppliers follow a process involving technical testing and completion of a Target Operating Model (TOM) assessment (which covers wider requirements, such as IG, Clinical Safety, Business Requirements, etc). This assessment is a point-in-time assessment of the solution.For, as a Provider Suppliers will need to complete the relevant NHS Digital Assurance Approach detailed under each of the specific requirement pages. To achieve GP Connect compliance as a Consumer, Suppliers will need to follow the SCAL (Supplier Conformance Assessment List). More detail on this can be found here.

For advice, access to testing resources, and support contact gpconnect@nhs.net.

Requirements

The current GP Connect Specifications are:

• GP Connect 0.7.34 for Access Record HTML
• GP Connect 1.2.7 for 5.0 for Access Record Structured
• GP Connect 1.2.7-beta for Appointments Management 
• GP Connect Send Document 1.3.1 for Send Document
• GP Connect Update Record - ITK3 for Update Record

For the definitive list of GP Connect API versions please see GP Connect Specification VersionsIt is expected that this specification will require uplifting to support achievement of FRA under existing GP Connect arrangements. Suppliers will be required to meet these uplifts before GP Connect FRA is awarded. The GP Connect programme will work to ensure these uplifts contain critical FRA impacting changes only, any other changes will be built into roadmap specifications on the new Futures framework.

Documentation

All technical documentation, including information on testing, environments and assurance, is hosted on NHS on NHS Developer Network.

Dependencies

Creating a compliant implementation requires implementing the following dependent interface standardsStandards:

• Personal Demographics Service (PDS) *

     Or 

• Spine Mini Services

     Or

• Generic FHIR Receiver

*May be sourced indirectly by existing PDS interface provided by PIM solution, either via API to PIM solution, or as a shared application resource if delivered as part of the same solution.

Roadmap