ID	S80
Version	1.1.0
Type	Interoperability Standard
Status	Published
Effective Date	Mar 31, 2024
Framework(s)	Digital Social Care Records
Traceability Matrix	Open

Introduction

This Standard provides information to Suppliers on interfaces they may need to implement and relevant resources. General principles of interoperability and requirements are also introduced.

Future changes to interfaces will be communicated via the Roadmap. 

Interoperability principles

These interoperability principles are a SHOULD and Suppliers are expected to adhere to them wherever possible. Whilst adherence will not be assessed via the Solution Assurance process at this time, the Authority will expect any deviation from these principles to be supported by a valid rationale on delivery of interfaces. The Authority may use adherence to these principles to guide decision making in circumstances of non-compliance or partial compliance against assured Standards.

1. True interoperability (defined as the ability of two or more systems to work together unchanged, even if they weren't designed to work together) rather than integration (change is required to make the systems connect) should be achieved wherever possible - Integration takes work, interoperability just works. Although the term interoperability is in widespread use within the NHS, what is meant is rarely well defined and the terms interoperability and integration are frequently used interchangeably. In our experience, the NHS uses a weak definition where two systems are said to be interoperable if they can exchange data in any way - even if that exchange is via a bespoke, point-to-point integration. True interoperability reduces the integration burden and allows systems to communicate more readily. 

2. Interoperability is more important than supporting customisation. Use the base definition of standards wherever possible. Extend only by addition and by exception. Do not view integration as a source of competitive advantage.

3. Use open design. The effectiveness of security components included in a Solution design should not be compromised by any visibility of that design, i.e. should not rely on obscurity.

4. Use open and government standards. Design systems up front to support information sharing. This covers both alignment with Open Standards and the use of Open APIs. Use open standards (including from outside healthcare), and common government platforms (eg GOV.UK, identity assurance, shared services) where available.

5. Make data open by default. Whilst minimising and securing personal data, or data restricted for national security reasons. Public data should be made available by default in both human and open machine-readable formats. Users should have access to, and control over how their own personal data is shared.

6. Use a common data model. Health or Care systems are connected in a many-to-many fashion. In this scenario, the use of a common data model ensures that each system only has to be able to translate to and from the common model and does not need system-specific knowledge of myriad other connected systems.

7. Messages should always be structured. Adding preformatted ‘human readable’ text or formats such as HTML to messages increases coupling with the source system and reduces the reusability of the message while increasing the risk of a system receiving inappropriate data which cannot be detected. Receiving systems are responsible for transforming structured message into appropriate formats (e.g. HTML, PDF or images etc.). It's always preferable to store the structured data and render to a display format on demand.

8. Interfaces must be system agnostic and semantically standardised. Systems must not expose their internal complexity and data structures on interfaces, nor should they expect systems they interface with to understand their internal data encodings and semantics.

9. Use decoupled integration patterns wherever possible. Decoupling should be achieved using appropriate integration patterns such as publish-subscribe and event-based architectures.

Interoperability non-functional requirements

The following overarching requirements apply to all interfaces in the scope of the Interoperability Standard which are offered by a Solution. 

Minimum non-functional requirements for interfaces built to the Authority's specifications

Where an interface/extract is built to the Authority's functional specifications, (e.g. IM1 - Interface Mechanism, GP Connect) the following requirements apply to the production implementation. For requirements relating to performance and availability Suppliers should refer to the Service Level Agreement.

Capability-independent interoperability Standards

This section lists the interoperability requirements which are not linked to single Capabilities. These are typically (but not exclusively) supporting Standards such as communications protocols or related technical Standards.

Communications

• Email (DSCR) (system accounts for automated sending for purposes such as notifications)

Roadmap