National Record Locator roadmap

Future changes planned and past changes delivered for the National Record Locator.

Strategy

The National Record Locator service is currently undergoing transformation under the NRL programme.

Our main strategic objectives are:

connect all Shared Care Records via the NRL API
support the standardisation of information available, including structured data, in addition to unstructured PDF documents
broadening methods of accessing patient data on the NRL
add new pointer types to the new API, including pointer types where patients have multiple of the same type (such as appointments and diagnostic imaging reports).
decommission the legacy NRL API

Roadmap

What has previously been referred to as 'NRL Futures' is now known as 'NRL v.3.0'.

This roadmap was last reviewed by the team on 31 March 2026.

Interweave is now providing International Patient Summary PDFs on behalf of University Hospitals Leicester and Humber Teaching Hospital.
We now have 6 of 8 shared care record providers live as NRL providers.
We have migrated Bettercare from NRL v.2.8. to NRL v.3.0.
BPAC are now providing us with Advance Care Plans for St Helena’s hospice (5000 patients in South East Essex).

Planned go-live of an additional Intersystems site (Lincolnshire ICB) with the provision of pointers to International Patient Summary PDFs.
Planned go-live of an additional Orion site (Hampshire and IOW ICB) with the provision of pointers to Advance Care Plans and ReSPECT forms.
Planned go-live of 5 Interweave sites (Humber and North Yorkshire ICB, West Yorkshire ICB, South Yorkshire ICB, Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB, and Nottinghamshire ICB) with the provision of pointers to International Patient Summary PDFs.
Planned go-live of an additional Graphnet site (Kent and Medway ICB) with the provision of pointers to International Patient Summary PDFs.
Introduction of new permission model allowing us to grant permissions at a transactional level, as well as a pointer category level.
Ongoing improvements to documentation, especially around onboarding (including the introduction of ServiceNow forms for common service requests, like permission requests).
Ongoing improvements to management information dashboards.

Provide ‘bulk’ facilities, including the ability to bulk update pointers, and do reconciliation checks.
Decommission the legacy NRL v.2.8 APIs.
Introduction of ‘About Me’ pointer types.
Support the roll out of shared care record NRL integrations to further ICBs.
Onboard remaining 2 shared care record suppliers (Oracle Cerner and 2T).
Onboard more ambulance services and NHS 111 users (via NCRS, ShCRs, and Cleric).

Record retrieval functionality is to be embedded within NRL, so that separate onboarding and endpoint configuration is not required.
Onboard East of England Ambulance Service to provide patient-specific protocol pointers.
Onboard more maternity services as consumers (via NCRS).
Onboard GP system suppliers as consumers.
Support for new pointer types, including diagnostic imaging reports.
Support healthcare worker and patient access authentication modes.
Onboard the NHS App as a consumer.
Onboard FDP as a consumer.

Change history

A practice Disaster Recovery exercise was completed, to ensure we can provide business continuity.
Completed a data quality audit, to identify and delete duplicate and broken pointers, to improve consumers user experience.
Our API catalogue documentation has been improved, to make onboarding easier.
A new ‘in-context launch’ feature was developed to support the launching of entire records/applications, like the Greater Manchester Care Record.
Additional stress testing was done to prove we can cope with increased adoption.

Introduced of a new Advance Care Plan pointer type for future onboarding.
Migrated Graphnet (Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB’s provision of pointers to ReSPECT forms) from the legacy NRL v.2.8. API to the new NRL v.3.0. provider API.
Plexus (Sussex ICB) went Live with the provision of pointers to Mental Health Crisis Plan PDFs.
3 Intersystems sites (Birmingham and Solihull ICB, Coventry and Warwickshire ICB, and Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB) went Live with the provision of pointers to International Patient Summary PDFs.
Our first of type direct consumer (InterSystems with Birmingham and Solihull ICB, Coventry and Warwickshire ICB, and Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB) went Live.
Introduction of a new International Patient Summary (Summary Record) pointer type.
2 Orion sites (Devon ICB and Cornwall ICB) went Live with the provision of pointers to Treatment Escalation Plan PDFs.
Introduced a new Treatment Escalation Plan pointer type.
Delivered feature parity between the NRL v.2.8 and NRL v.3.0 services, so that it is easier for providers to migrate from the legacy service to the replacement service.
Onboarded the National Data Repository as an NRL provider, so that pointers to Lloyd George Records folders and other unstructured PDFs they hold can be created in future.
Introduced a new ‘Lloyd George Record Folder’ pointer type, so that GPs can access the previously paper-based elements of a patients record, in the event that information is missing from a patients EHR, or they need the full details from the original documents (Pointers yet to be created, and GPs yet to be onboarded as consumers).
Introduced a new appointment pointer type (Pointers yet to be created).
Built a new test harness, to assist suppliers onboarding to NRL v.3.0.
Uplifted NRL v.3.0 to ‘gold’ level service.
Migrated NCRS from the legacy NRL v.2.8. API to the new NRL v.3.0. consumer API, so that we could start migrating providers.

Improved auditing so that we can monitor the service more pro-actively.
NRL v3.0 service technically live for new providers to onboard.
Booking and referral pointer types can now be registered on the new NRL v3.0 service.
Migration of all STU3 pointers from the current NRL v2.8 service to NRL v.3.0, so consumers on NRL v.3.0 can access all pointers.
Ongoing 'one-directional data sync’ between current NRL v2.8 and NRL v.3.0, so the pointers can be retrieved via NRL v.3.0.
‘Count’ functionality added to NRL v.3.0, so consumers can check whether there are any pointers for a patient, before having to authenticate, to save time.

Get involved

To discuss and provide input to our strategy and roadmap, contact us.

Last edited: 1 April 2026 11:57 am