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Urgent and emergency care, Electronic Referral Service (e-RS), medication, optometry and bookings

Ensuring best use of digital technology in urgent and emergency care to get patients the right help, in the right place, at the right time.

Responsible person

Director, Urgent and Emergency Care Technology, Electronic Referral Service, Medication, Optometry and Bookings

What we do

Products, programmes and services that deliver benefits to patients, healthcare professionals and the wider health and care system through improved digital integration.

Products and services

The following products, services and programmes of work are developed, run, and maintained.

NHS 111 online

Lead: Debbie Floyd

Our service provides digital access to triage, healthcare advice and guidance. Aiming to compliment the telephony service, it is used by approximately 750,000 patients per month.

NHS Pathways

Lead: Laura Jones

Our triage software and suite of other products which are used to safely direct more than 18.5 million calls to NHS 111 and 999.

Directory of services

Lead: Dan O'Neill

The directory of services (DoS) provides real time information about which services and clinicians are available. This means that patients can be better supported by appropriate services closer to home.

Directory of Services Integration

Lead: Dan O’Neill

The Directory of Services (DoS) integration service ensures that the Directory of Services is always up to date with service information that has been entered by service providers in the NHS Profile

Urgent and emergency care (UEC) data insights

Lead: Nora Lukova

The urgent and emergency care (UEC) data insights team enable insights into the journeys taken by patients through urgent and emergency care. This involves linking data together in new ways, which helps improve decision making.

Urgent and emergency care (UEC) interoperability

Lead: Kate Gill

The urgent and emergency care (UEC) triage journey team help resolve operational issues for UEC providers. They set the interoperability standards for systems used by UEC providers.

Service finder

Lead: Dan O'Neill

The service finder programme enables healthcare professionals to access service information found in the directory of services.

Repeat caller service

Lead: Debbie Floyd

The repeat caller service is a national service and a core part of the integrated urgent care national architecture. It acts as an audit for the NHS 111 service, monitoring users who have been processed through the service 3 times or more in a 96 hour period. 

Interoperable medicines

Lead: Fintan Grant

Improving insight into the use, spend, safety, and effectiveness of medicines by providing high-quality data.

NHS bookings and referrals

Lead: Adnan Riaz

NHS booking and referral APIs will be used to connect services so that a user can be booked a slot and have their triage information shared at the point of care. 

The team are focusing initially on the 111-Emergency Department (ED) use case as a follow-on from the NHS 111 First work that was delivered last year.

Digital referrals and consultations

Lead: Liz Butcher

Providing an easy-to-use digital referral service that puts patients in control of their appointments.

Pharmacy, optometry, dentistry, ambulance and community

Lead: Richard Ashcroft

The digital integration of pharmacy, optometry, dentistry, ambulance and community (including mental health) sectors.

Child Protection - Information Sharing

Lead: Martin Dennys

Alerting health and social care staff when young people with child protection plans, or with looked-after status attend unscheduled care settings - for example, Accident and Emergency (A&E).

Last edited: 22 December 2023 11:00 am