Spine

Spine supports the IT infrastructure for health and social care in England, joining together over 23,000 healthcare IT systems in 20,500 organisations.

Access the Spine portal (HSCN smartcard users)

Read about Spine technical information - Warranted Environment Specification (WES)

Check your IT system and environment are supported for accessing Spine systems with a smartcard.

Access the national service desk weblog tool

Raise a technical or support call for Spine (log-in and HSCN access required).

Spine allows information to be shared securely through national services such as the Electronic Prescription Service, Summary Care Record and the e-Referral Service.

NHS Digital develops and maintains Spine through the Digital Delivery Centre. Recent developments include enabling the sharing of child protection information via the Child Protection Information System, and developing ways to allow easier access to demographic data through the Spine Mini Service.

Use Spine

Most users access Spine through clinical systems or through the Spine portal.

New ways are being developed to help systems suppliers design IT systems for health and care which can integrate with Spine or access important patient information. Contact the Digital Delivery Centre for more information by emailing enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.

Contact details

You can get support by calling the National Service Desk on 0300 3035035 or raising a call using the national service desk tool.

Further information

Open access test environment for Spine, Opentest

Developers can test health and care applications using our Spine test environment.

Spine Mini Service - simplified ways to connect to Spine

Information for developers and health and care IT specialists

Spine technical information: Warranted Environment Specification (WES)

Computer systems which access NHS Digital services through Spine have to meet certain technical standards. The Warranted Environment Specification (WES) defines the client environments that we support and applications requiring a smartcard or other approved authenticator to be aligned with the terms and conditions.

CP-IS Spine Mini Service Domain Message Specification

Information for developers - message definitions and interactions required to support the rollout of the Child Protection Information Sharing (CP-IS) Spine Mini Service.

Transaction Messaging Service Java implementation

TMS Java implementation contains a set of tools for network operations on Spine.

Transaction Messaging Service Microsoft .NET implementation

This package contains an implementation of a Spine message handler written in C# for the Microsoft .Net 4.0 platform, provided under the Apache 2.0 licence.

Spine Mini Service Provider for Personal Demographics Service

The NHS Digital Spine Mini Service Provider (SMSP) lets health and social care providers access important information held on Spine. It aims to reduce the complexities around integration with the Spine.

Reasonable Adjustment Flag

The Reasonable Adjustment Flag allows health care professionals to record, share and view the reasonable adjustments a patient will need to be made for them during their care.

Last edited: 22 March 2021 3:26 pm