Organisation Data Service (ODS)

The Organisation Data Service (ODS) is a national service for managing reference information about organisations that are involved in health and social care in England and beyond.

ODS holds and publishes unique identification codes and accompanying reference data for organisations and their sites across health and social care. These are issued by ODS or other organisations authorised to do so, for example, the NHS BSA. 

It covers a wide variety of NHS and non-NHS organisations, such as:

• NHS trusts
• GP practices
• pharmacies
• independent sector healthcare providers
• social care providers

For each organisation, ODS holds a unique identifier called an 'organisation code' (commonly referred to as the ODS code), and holds key information such as organisation name, type, address and contact details. It also holds unique identifiers for other reference data related to these organisations (such as their sites) to enable their operations. 

ODS data can be accessed through a number of different products designed to meet individual user needs, including:

• APIs for technical users
• a web portal and CSV downloads for non-technical users
• data downloads for knowledge users

ODS is also responsible for:

• publishing a limited set of data regarding NHS practitioners – namely prescribers, including GPs - and uploading clinician codes to the NHS Spine
• the maintenance of the national Caldicott Guardian, Senior Information Risk Owner and Information Asset Owner Registers
• maintaining Registration Authority hierarchies on the NHS Spine to control which organisations can set up smart cards
• bulk pharmacy nomination transfers requested by system suppliers on behalf of Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)

ODS codes are used in almost every IT system across the NHS. ODS data is published under Open Government Licence and is therefore available for all to use.

Some examples of who would use this service include:

• healthcare workers
• data analysts
• developers building health and social care software 

Use of this service is mandatory for any use case that requires an organisation to be identified by its ODS code.

ODS codes are used for several purposes, including reporting, system set up and access control. The people using them can range from health or social care practitioners to software developers.

For example: 

• healthcare workers can use the ODS Portal to look up an organisation code to input into point-of-care applications
• data analysts submitting or analysing national data collections use ODS codes data to identify organisations delivering care, and the locations from which care is provided
• patient-facing applications such as the NHS App use ODS data to identify or display organisation details to a patient
• national systems such as NHSmail require an ODS code to function

ODS works like this:

1. We are informed about data changes. This might be an update from a user or it might be via one of our routine 3rd party data feeds.
2. If applicable, we make the changes to the data.
3. Users access the data through our products.

This service is live.

ODS is a bronze service, meaning it is operational and supported only during business hours (8am to 6pm), Monday to Friday, excluding Bank Holidays.

Find information about the latest changes to ODS: 

• product updates and enhancements 
• mergers, splits and acquisitions 

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