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Creating a new NHS England: Health Education England, NHS Digital and NHS England have merged. More about the merger.

Data Registers Service

Responding to demand from across the health system, NHS Digital have developed the Data Registers Service. This will provide a single trusted source and location for data registers.

Beta version - deprecated

The Data Registers Service is deprecated, meaning it is still available but is planned for retirement. The proposed retirement date is 1 September 2023. It is also still a beta service. Support is, therefore, limited.

If you have any concerns or questions about the deprecation, contact us.

About data registers

Data registers are live lists of data, each managed by a custodian across a range of organisations. They represent the approved version of that data. They can also commonly be known as 'lookup' tables and used to categorise data in databases. Examples include organisation codes, postcodes and diagnosis codes. The objective is to ensure consistent definitions of data over time and between data repositories, organisations or processes. A data register stores data elements that include both semantics and representations.

See what data registers are available on our data registers tool.

New registers will be added regularly, as well as additional functionality; find more detail on our Upcoming registers page.


Service overview

The Data Registers Service will:

  • continue to develop and assure new data registers according to user needs, working with trusted data custodians to obtain high quality data
  • manage all data registers so users always have access to the most up to date data
  • use our Latest news page to share with users any news or issues relating to data registers
  • provide a comprehensive register of metadata

Data formats

Data is available via a Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API) in a variety of formats including CSV and JSON - further formats are planned. Read more on the API endpoints


Exclusions from the service

  1. Patient confidential data.
  2. Transactional data - the source data which is supplied from external parties to NHS Digital for use in systems. For example, workforce returns and CDS submissions.
  3. Management reference data for corporate systems such as human resources.

Request service

We are developing our new data registers request service, which means users can request for new registers to be considered for inclusion. If you would like to request that a new register be included in the Data Registers Service, please contact us providing details of the name of the new register and from where, and how, the data can be sourced.


Contact details

Get in contact with us by email at [email protected] (quoting NHS Digital Data Registers Service) or call on 0300 303 5678

Further information

external

Last edited: 4 May 2023 4:53 pm