Prerequisites

Consumer

The Consumer system:

• SHALL have previously resolved the organisation’s FHIR endpoint Base URL through the Spine Directory Service
• SHALL have previously traced the patient’s NHS Number using the Personal Demographics Service or an equivalent service.

API Usage

Resolve (zero or more) Patient resources using a business identifier (i.e. NHS Number).

Request Operation

The [system] field SHALL be populated with a valid patient identifier system URL (i.e. https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number).

The consumer system SHALL apply percent encoding when constructing the request URL as indicated in RFC 3986 Section 2.1. The will ensure that downstream servers correctly handle the pipe | character which must be used in the identifier parameter value below.

FHIR Relative Request

GET /Patient?identifier=[system]|[value]

FHIR Absolute Request

GET https://[proxy_server]/https://[provider_server]/[fhir_base]/Patient?identifier=[system]|[value]

Request Headers

Consumers SHALL include the following additional HTTP request headers:

Payload Request Body

N/A

Error Handling

Provider systems:

• SHALL return an GPConnect-OperationOutcome-1 resource that provides additional detail when one or more request fields are corrupt or a specific business rule/constraint is breached.

For example the:

• Business identifier [system] is not recognised/supported by the Provider system.
• Business identifier fails structural validation checks (i.e. not enough digits to be a valid NHS Number).

Request Response

Response Headers

Provider systems are not expected to add any specific headers beyond that described in the HTTP and FHIR® standards.

Payload Response Body

Provider systems:

• SHALL return a 200 OK HTTP status code on successful execution of the operation.
• SHALL return zero or more matching Patient resources in a Bundle of type searchset.
• SHALL only return Patient resources for Active patients (Definition of a GP Connect Active Patient).
• SHALL return Patient resources that conform to the CareConnect-GPC-Patient-1 profile.
• SHALL include the URI of the CareConnect-GPC-Patient-1 profile StructureDefinition in the Patient.meta.profile element of the returned Patient resources.
• SHALL include the versionId and fullUrl of the current version of each Patient resource.
• SHALL include all relevant business identifier details (i.e. NHS Number) for each Patient resource.
• SHALL supply gender, name, birth date or deceased date where these are available (as indicated by the Must-Support FHIR property)

{
	"resourceType": "Bundle",
	"type": "searchset",
	"entry": [{
		"fullUrl": "http://gpconnect.aprovider.nhs.net/GP001/STU3/1/Patient/2",
		"resource": {
			"resourceType": "Patient",
			"id": "2",
			"meta": {
				"versionId": "636064088097580046",
				"lastUpdated": "2016-08-10T16:52:39.716+01:00",
				"profile": ["https://fhir.nhs.uk/STU3/StructureDefinition/CareConnect-GPC-Patient-1"]
			},
			"identifier": [{
				"extension": [{
					"url": "https://fhir.nhs.uk/STU3/StructureDefinition/Extension-CareConnect-GPC-NHSNumberVerificationStatus-1",
					"valueCodeableConcept": {
						"coding": [{
							"system": "https://fhir.nhs.uk/STU3/CodeSystem/CareConnect-NHSNumberVerificationStatus-1",
							"code": "01"
						}]
					}
				}],
				"system": "https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number",
				"value": "9476719931"
			}],
			"name": [{
				"use": "usual",
				"family": ["Jackson"],
				"given": ["Jane"],
				"prefix": ["Miss"]
			}],
			"gender": "female",
			"birthDate": "22/02/1982"
		}
	}]
}

Example Code

C#

var client = new FhirClient("http://gpconnect.aprovider.nhs.net/GP001/STU3/1/");
client.PreferredFormat = ResourceFormat.Json;
var query = new string[] { "identifier=https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number|9476719931" };
var bundle = client.Search("Patient", query);
FhirSerializer.SerializeResourceToXml(bundle).Dump();

Java

FhirContext ctx = new FhirContext();
IGenericClient client = ctx.newRestfulGenericClient("http://gpconnect.aprovider.nhs.net/GP001/STU3/1/");
Bundle bundle = client.search().forResource(Patient.class)
.where(new TokenClientParam("identifier").exactly().systemAndCode("https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number", "9476719931"))
.encodedXml()
.execute();

cURL

curl -X GET -H 'Ssp-From: 0001' -H 'Ssp-To: 0002' -H 'Ssp-InteractionID: urn:nhs:names:services:gpconnect:fhir:rest:search:patient-1' -H 'Cache-Control: no-cache' -H 'Ssp-TraceID: e623b4de-f6bb-be0c-956d-c4ded0d58fc0' 'http://gpconnect.aprovider.nhs.net/GP001/STU3/1/Patient?identifier=https://fhir.nhs.uk/Id/nhs-number%7CP002'