Search criteria
The consumer system can specify which clinical areas it wishes to retrieve and within each clinical area what search criteria it wants to apply.
Medication and medical devices
- Search for all Medications and Medical Devices that were active on or after the specified date
- The consumer system requests all items from a start date
- The provider system returns all plans whose effective period end date is null or is on or after the start date
- Where no date is supplied by the consumer, all medications and medical devices are returned
- Include all the prescriptions issued under the returned medication/medical device plans
- The consumer system requests prescription issues
- For each of the returned medication/medical device plans, the provider system includes data for all of its issues
Allergies
- All active allergies will always be returned as it was considered clinically unsafe to only return a partial record of a patient’s active allergies
- Include resolved allergies
- The consumer system requests resolved allergies
- The provider system returns all the resolved allergies along with the active allergies
Problems
- Search for Problems with the specified combinations of significance and status
- The consumer system requests combinations of significance and status
- The consumer system can request Major Active, Minor Active, Major Inactive and/or Minor Inactive
- The consumer system can request multiple combinations in a single query
- The provider system returns all Problems that match the requested significance / status
- Where no significance / status is supplied by the consumer, all Problems are returned
Uncategorised data
- Search for all Uncategorised Data within the specified date range
- The consumer system request all items within a start and end date
- The provider system returns all items whose asserted date is within the start and end date (inclusive)
- Where no start date is supplied the search goes from the start of patient record
- Where no end date is supplied the search goes to the end of patient record
- Where no dates are supplied by the consumer, all uncategorised data items are returned
Consultations
- Search for all Consultations within the specified date range
- The consumer system request all items within a start and end date
- The provider system returns all items whose asserted date is within the start and end date (inclusive)
- Where there is a start date but no end date, the search goes to the end of the patient record
- Where there is an end date but no start date the search goes from the start of the patient record
- Search for the most recent x Consultations within the patient’s record
- The consumer system request the last x consultations
- The provider system returns the last x consultations
- Where a single filter is supplied by the consumer, it is applied as defined above
- Where both filters are supplied by the consumer, all the Consultations that match either of the filters are returned
- If no filters are supplied by the consumer, all Consultations are returned
Immunisations
- All Immunisations will always be returned.
Following a linkage
For the majority of scenarios, the information required by the consumer can be retrieved through a single query. The consumer system identifies which clinical areas of the patient record it requires and which search criteria should be applied, then calls the GP Connect API. The provider system then returns all the requested information in a single bundle.
There are, however, scenarios where the information to the first query identifies additional information that is required.
For example:
- a retrieved medication is linked to a problem that the clinician wants to review
- a retrieved problem is linked to several consultations that the clinician wants to review
- a retrieved immunisation is linked to a consultation that the clinician wants to review
There may be a decision by the consuming system (or by a user of the consuming system) that they require additional information about the linked clinical item. To get these, the consumer system may wish to call the GP Connect API a second time.
This version of GP Connect does not allow a consumer to search for a specific item in the patient record by its identifier. Instead the consumer should use the supported filters to retrieve a larger dataset and then search for the required item(s) within that dataset.
For example:
- To display a specific consultation linked to a problem, the consumer system could request all the consultations that took place within the active period of the problem then search for the required consultation within the returned data.
Scale of search
It is the responsibility of the consuming system to decide what data to request from the provider systems. When determining how wide to make the search criteria, the consumer system must consider the following guidelines:
- Always apply the Caldicott Principles
- The first API query on a patient should aim to retrieve the amount of data required to support the majority of queries that their clinician/user will make whilst avoiding the retrieval of large quantities of unnecessary data
- Where a follow-up query is required it should aim to retrieve sufficient data to support any other queries that their clinician/user will make
- The consumer system should aim to avoid scenarios where more than two queries are required on the same patient as part of the same local interaction with a clinician/user. This does NOT preclude the consumer system from making further queries where necessary to support patient care.
- It is acceptable for the consumer system to request and retrieve a large proportion of the patient’s record from the provider system and filter out the unnecessary data before presenting it to their clinicians / users where the consumer organisation:
- has determined it is necessary to support patient care
- has met all of the GP Connect information governance (IG) requirements including data sharing agreements, confidentiality and auditing
The details on how this is implemented in an API can be found in the API definition.
