Foundations

Introduction to the GP Connect Foundations capability

Important: This version of the Foundations capability pack is a minimal version including the metadata endpoint only, to support the Access Record HTML capability. From GP Connect 1.0.0 onwards, it is expanded to include the ability to read Patient, Practitioner, Organization and Location resources.

Purpose

The foundations capability cover the basic API requirements and prerequisites to utilise the GP Connect APIs.

Important: In order to successfully make use of the GP Connect APIs, initially a level of pre-existing accredited Spine connectivity will be required along with some FHIR foundation API capabilities.

Roadmap: Over time the necessity to have access to pre-existing spine services (i.e. PDS and SDS integration) is likely to be replaced by GP Connect/FHIR based equivalents.

Prerequisites

PDS

You’ll need to be able to provide a verified NHS Number to use an API. This can be achieved using a spine accredited system, a DBS batch-traced record (CSV), or using a Spine Mini Services Provider (HL7v3).

SDS / ODS

In order to resolve a given GP Practice organisation to their URI you’ll need to be able to do a spine SDS query (LDAP) using the practice’s ODS Code to perform an SDS End Point Lookup.

FHIR

In order to be a compliant FHIR server, provider systems need to expose a valid FHIR Conformance profile.

Please also refer to Development Guidance - FHIR API Guidance - Common API Guidance for full details on the common FHIR API patterns used throughout all the GP Connect APIs.

Use cases

Get the FHIR conformance profile

Spine interactions

The Foundation capability message set includes the following set of spine interactions:

Operation	InteractionID
Read Metadata	`urn:nhs:names:services:gpconnect:fhir:rest:read:metadata`

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