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Creating a new NHS England: NHS England and NHS Digital merged on 1 February 2023. More about the merger.

Directory of Services (DoS)

The Directory of Services (DoS) is a central directory that is integrated with NHS Pathways and is automatically accessed if the patient does not require an ambulance or by any attending clinician in the urgent and emergency care services.

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Learn more about requesting access to the DOS

Learn more about the DOS and APIs

Read our API acceptable use policy

The DOS supports clinicians, call handlers, commissioners and patients by:

  • providing real time information about available services and clinicians across all care settings that are available to support a patient as close to a patient's home as possible
  • the interoperability options of the system means a patients only need to describe their symptoms once, enabling them to be directed to the correct available service for their symptoms without repeat triage
  • providing information about the most appropriate and cost effective care for a patient
  • reducing the burden on urgent and emergency and secondary care settings by reducing unnecessary ambulance call outs and hospital referral
  • having the data on the demand and supply of health care skills it collects easily analysed and reported with the integrated Intelligent Data Tool

The interoperability options of the system mean patients only need to describe their symptoms once, enabling them to be directed to the correct available service for their symptoms without repeated triage.


Directory of Services APIs

The Directory of Services (DoS) contains information for a wide range of health and care services across England.   

The DoS provides APIs to allow third party systems to retrieve service information from the DoS. Read more about DoS APIs. 

Only users who comply with the DoS acceptable use policy are allowed to use the DoS. Learn more about the DoS API acceptable use policy. 

Learn more about the application process, including what to include and how to apply for access.

Further information

Last edited: 28 October 2020 2:52 pm