Sharing clinical data

Whether you are looking to store patient data, make it easier to find clinical records or need to share data about a patients' reasonable adjustment requirements, our collection of digital products and services can help you do this in a way that is safe, efficient and low-cost.

We want to move away from a system where data is sent between organisations in inconsistent formats and quality, making it hard to share. Instead, we’re building a central NHS hub that manages data to ensure it flows smoothly, is high quality and can be accessed by everyone who needs it.

Take a look at the functions our products can support, find out more about how each one works and how we can support you to benefit from the clinical information available to the NHS system.

The following table provides a list of functions and shows which of our national digital products and services are relied upon to deliver them. Choose a product link from the table below to find out more and to start onboarding with our APIs and services.

The following example highlights how some of these products combine to deliver digital solutions for common healthcare system needs:

How to share patient data with clinicians in another location 

By combining our data store, notifications and record locator services, healthcare systems can make patient data available to the health and care workers who need it via these 3 services: 

1. Our data store service (Patient Data Manager) gives systems a secure, central place for structured and unstructured clinical patient data. 

2. Our publish-subscribe messaging service (Multicast Notification Service) notifies interested systems when a patient record is added or updated, giving real-time awareness of changes. 

3. Our record retrieval system (National Record Locator) enables the discovery of patient records held in other systems meaning clinicians can locate information directly from the source.