Spine
Spine supports the IT infrastructure for health and social care in England, Wales and Isle of Man, joining together over 44,000 healthcare IT systems in 26,000 organisations.
About this service
Spine allows information to be shared securely through national services such as the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS), Personal Demographics Service (PDS), National Care Records Service (NCRS), e-Referral Service and the Patient Flags Service API.
Spine supports the IT infrastructure for health and social care in England, Wales and Isle of Man, joining together over 44,000 healthcare IT systems in 26,000 organisations. Up to 500,000 health professionals use it daily and 43 million messages are supported every day.
Overview of Spine - video
Click the "Play" button to watch a short video about the service.
This video lasts about 1 minute and 35 seconds.
Benefits
Benefits of Spine include:
- it enables critical services to provide frontline care by providing real-time patient data
- supports health and social care IT infrastructure in England, Wales and Isle of Man
- sends real-time notifications for life events (e.g. deaths and births)
- provides a scalable cloud based platform that makes use of modern technologies and open standards
Who the service is for
Spine is for healthcare professionals, health services and citizens who can validate their information against PDS via the Vaccinations National Booking Service, including:
- ambulance service
- pharmacies
- GPs and GP practices
- health visitors
- child health information services
- clinicians
Spine supports the IT infrastructure for health and social care in England, Wales and Isle of Man.
What information is available
The information held in Spine includes:
- clinical care information used by National Care Records Service (NCRS)
- information to identify individuals accessed through Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
- information around medication used by Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
Examples of use
NHS Spine enables healthcare professionals to rapidly access and exchange critical patient information using services such as NCRS, PDS and EPS.
Example of use include:
- pharmacies login to Spine via EPS to access prescription history information
- GPs login via their local system to access Spine
-
paramedics login to Spine via NCRS (or their local system) to access patient data such as demographics and summary care records
Security and trust are paramount when dealing with highly sensitive clinical data.
Status, service level and current usage
The first version of Spine (Spine i) went live in June 2004.
The current service (Spine ii) is live and has been in active use since August 2014.
It currently handles over 1.3 billion messages a month, translating to an average daily volume of 43 million messages per day.
Spine is a platinum service which means it is available and supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
How to access this service
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 us
The following table shows how to contact us about this service.
| Enquiry | Point of contact |
|---|---|
| Live service incident / General enquiries about the service |
National Service Desk Email: [email protected] or Report via our customer portal Telephone: 0300 303 5035 |
| Strategic direction of the service |
Shan Rahulan Email: [email protected] |
| Senior responsible officer (SRO) |
Shan Rahulan Email: [email protected] |
Further information
NHS Digital are developing a new, scalable platform to replace the current NHS Spine over the next 2 to 3 years. The Spine of the future will make use of modern technologies and open standards to meet the current and future needs of patients, staff, and citizens.
Access patients' personal information, such as name, address, date of birth, related people, registered GP, nominated pharmacy and NHS number using the FHIR version of the Personal Demographics Service (PDS) API.
Computer systems which access NHS England services through Spine have to meet certain technical standards. The Warrantied 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.
All health and social care organisations connecting to the NHS Spine must have a valid NHS Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificate in place to ensure encrypted patient data is transmitted securely. First generation (G1) certificates are expiring in 2024. All certificates should be updated to the second generation (G2) certificates by 2nd May 2024 to avoid any loss of service. NHS E will be making changes to their internal services week commencing the 6th May where spine and associated services will only be accepting and issuing on the G2 certificates. If you have not made the required changes, you will lose service.
These are the APIs and API standards which are currently available, or in development, from NHS England.
Information for users of NHS England's Path to Live testing and training environments.
Last edited: 17 April 2025 2:07 pm