Use this API to access the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) - the national electronic database of NHS patient details such as name, address, date of birth, related people and NHS number.

You can:

• verify a patient's NHS number
• retrieve a patient's details
• search for patient details

You cannot use this API to:

• update patient details
• create a new record for a birth
• receive birth notifications
• create a new record for a new patient
• register a new patient at a GP Practice - use National Health Application and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS) instead

This API:

• does not require the end user to be strongly authenticated with a smartcard
• only returns a result from a search if there is a single, unique match - it does not return multiple matches

This API can only be used where there is a legal basis to do so. Make sure you have a valid use case before you go too far with your development.  To do this, make a PDS access request. 

You must do this before you can go live (see ‘Onboarding’ below). 

The following APIs also give access to the Personal Demographics Service:

• Personal Demographics Service - FHIR API - use this new API to search for patients, retrieve patients by NHS number and update patients.

• Personal Demographics Service - HL7 V3 API - use this if you want to use functions that are not yet available on the FHIR API.

The following APIs are also related to this API:

• Organisation Data Service - FHIR API - use this to get full details for the organisations related to the patient, such as their registered GP or nominated pharmacy.

• Organisation Data Service - ORD API - use this to access a searchable national repository of NHS Organisation Reference Data using an ORD interface.

This API is stable.

This API is an HL7 V3 API. All interactions are synchronous.

For more details, see HL7 V3.

You can access this API via:

• the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN)
• the internet

It requires a secure network connection but not smartcards, because it only returns a single exact match to a trace request and does not allow updates to the Spine service.

For more details, see Network access for APIs.

This API is application-restricted, meaning:

• the calling application is authenticated - we do care who it is

• the end user is not authenticated - we do not verify who it is or whether they are present

In particular, it uses TLS-MA authentication.

In addition, we require calling applications to:

• authenticate end users locally with a minimum of user ID and password

• use role-based access control (RBAC) locally to control end user access to the patient data

• keep an audit trail locally of all accesses to patient data by end users

For more details, see Spine Mini Service Provider for Personal Demographics Service.

For details, see Spine Mini Service Provider for Personal Demographics Service.

You must get your software approved by us before it can go live. We call this onboarding. 

For details, see Spine Mini Service Provider for Personal Demographics Service.

For details, see Spine Mini Service Provider for Personal Demographics Service.