Introduction
The Care Connect APIs have been developed by NHS Digital in collaboration with the INTEROPen community. These APIs aim to better support the delivery of care by opening up information and data held across different clinical care settings through the use of nationally defined FHIR® resources.
To learn more about NHS Digital and INTEROPen please refer to the information at the bottom of this page.
Care Connect Core API
The Care Connect Core API RESTful FHIR STU3 Implementation Guide is a component of the Care Connect API specification suite.
The initial core API has been created to provide read only access to fine grained information represented in FHIR resources.
The resources in scope for this API are:
| Clinical | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | Diagnostics | Medications |
| AllergyIntolerance | Observation | Medication |
| Condition (Problem) | MedicationRequest | |
| Procedure | MedicationStatement | |
| Immunization |
| Base | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Individuals | Entities | Management | |
| Patient | Organization | Encounter | |
| Practitioner | Location | ||
| PractitionerRole |
API Query Mechanism and Conformance
The API intends to mandate a minimal set of the query mechanism to ensure the maximum number of systems can implement the API.
Query parameters conformance will be categorised as:
- MUST – these search parameters MUST be implemented for the specified resource type
- SHOULD – these search parameters are expected to be implemented, if the data to support the query is present in the host system
Additional search parameters MAY be added to reflect local requirements.
To be conformant, provider systems are required to implement all of the MUST parameters.
All search parameters MUST be described in the FHIR CapabilityStatement.
NHS Digital
NHS Digital is the national information and technology partner to the health and care system using digital technology to transform the NHS and social care.
To learn more about the Interoperability efforts at the NHS Digital, visit the NHS Digital Interoperability pages.
INTEROPen
INTEROPen is an OPEN collaboration of individuals, industry, standards organisations and health and care providers, who have agreed to work together to accelerate the development of open standards for interoperability in the health and social care sector.
The INTEROPen vision is to create a library of nationally defined HL7® FHIR® resources and interaction patterns that implementers can adopt to simplify integration and interoperability within UK health and social care.
Find out more on the INTEROPen website.