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Additional information for digital leaders – March 2023

The demand for bandwidth from NHS organisations is increasing by around 30% each year. Tailored support and funding is available from the Gigabit Pathway team to help ensure your organisation gets the right connectivity, when it needs it, in the most efficient way. Find out more or email nhsdigital.future.connectivity@nhs.net.

Join us on 23 March from 2.30 to 3.30pm for a non-technical webinar to learn about NHS England Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and why they are important for health and social care technology. Register for the webinar.

The NHS Cloud Community is now open and welcoming new members. It provides a new way to support cloud adoption across the NHS by allowing all NHS organisations to:

  • connect with like-minded peers in different phases of their cloud journey
  • benefit from peer support and expertise
  • view case studies, supplier presentations and other helpful materials from colleagues

Join the community (FutureNHS account needed).

Read how moving to the cloud provided Kettering General Hospital with a more flexible way to procure their infrastructure and scale up services to meet demand, as well as help to increase stability.

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Help improve and develop FHIR UK CORE

The use of FHIR UK CORE is a key interoperability requirement and enables systems to integrate with the wider healthcare landscape.  To help with the development of FHIR we are currently undertaking Sprint 6 of the Clinical and Technical Assurance process and are now reviewing use cases and proposed changes for pathology, genomics and Welsh diagnostics.

We would like more system users to get involved in the Sprint to ensure it addresses the needs of the system.

Find out more about the sprint and register by emailing interoperabilityteam@nhs.net. This sprint will close on 20 March 2023.

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Additional information for GP practice managers – March 2023

Support for switching on access to GP records

1 in 5 practices have now given their patients online access to new entries in their patient records.

You can join NHS England and the Patients Association on 16 March (12-1pm) for a webinar about the patient impact of online access.

We offer training sessions, videos, and detailed guidance to help everybody in your practice understand this change and get ready for it. There is also a toolkit of materials to explain the new access to patients, including a patient-facing video about online access. 

 

Further information about Register with a GP surgery service

Recent improvements to the Register with a GP surgery online service include:

  • revised alcohol and smoking questions to improve patient information at point of registration
  • an option for patients to nominate their chosen pharmacy

We are planning to add more features and integrate the service with the NHS App later this year. See our roadmap for more details.

The Register with a GP surgery service is now live with almost 650 practices and has been shown to reduce the time it takes administrative staff to register new patients by up to 15 minutes per registration.

GP practices can begin using the service by self-enrolling or by contacting the dedicated support team. Further information can also be found on the resource hub.

 

Help available to improve your future connectivity

Demand for internet (including HSCN) bandwidth is increasing by 30% a year. It is important you take action so your practice can continue to support the provision of remote care and monitoring in the future and upgrade services as part of digital transformation.

Tailored support and funding is available from the Gigabit Pathway team to help general practices get the right connectivity in the most efficient way. Find out more or email contact your integrated care board IT lead.

 

Help us improve the NHS App - patients’ test results

We are looking to understand more about the queries the practice receives from patients regarding test results and how or if patients are notified of their test results. 

To help out with this project, we would like GP staff who, as part of their work, either answer patient queries regarding test results and/or notify patients of their test results, please fill in this 5-minute anonymous survey. 

 

Event: NHS ConfedExpo 2023

This year’s NHS ConfedExpo will take place on 14 and 15 June at Manchester Central. The event will bring together health and care leaders and their teams from across the sector for 2 days of inspiring sessions, shared learning, and valuable networking opportunities.     

NHS, local authority and wider public sector staff are eligible for a free ticket. Book your pass and follow @ConfedExpo on Twitter for the latest updates.

 

 

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For action: Prepare for multifactor authentication

Multifactor authentication (MFA) will be enabled for all NHSmail user accounts on 30 June 2023. We are encouraging organisations to begin planning their local roll-out of MFA.

There is a MFA Adoption Toolkit to help guide you through the process. Guidance for both users and local administrators is also available.

If you need any further support that the MFA Adoption Toolkit or guidance does not cover, you can contact helpdesk@nhs.net. 

 

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Additional information for the research and data community – March 2023

New e-RS data dashboard enters beta phase

A new dashboard that provides NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) summary statistics and performance metrics on referrals and advice and guidance requests is now available.

The e-RS provider dashboard, which will help NHS teams drive service improvements, gives users access to weekly data from e-RS. The initial beta release allows data to be cut by provider, specialty and clinic types, and allows benchmarking between provider organisations, regions and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs).

The 3-part beta phase will see up to 200 users given access to the dashboard so they can provide feedback and suggest improvements prior to its full release.

Access to the dashboard is open to clinicians, information analysts and other operational and administration staff. Request access to the dashboard.

 

News: Milestone for the ‘Our Future Health’ research programme

Our NHS DigiTrials service is supporting recruitment into the Our Future Health, which is the largest-ever UK health research programme. 

Millions of people from different backgrounds from all areas of the UK are being invited to participate and provide information about their health and lifestyles. This will create an incredibly detailed view of population health in the UK to support discovery and testing of more effective approaches to prevention, earlier detection and treatment of diseases.

To date, more than 100,000 appointments have been booked by volunteer participants. Find out how we invite people to take part. 

 

Event: NHS ConfedExpo 2023

This year’s NHS ConfedExpo will take place on 14 and 15 June at Manchester Central. The event will bring together health and care leaders and their teams from across the sector for 2 days of inspiring sessions, shared learning, and valuable networking opportunities.     

NHS, local authority and wider public sector staff are eligible for a free ticket. Book your pass and follow @ConfedExpo on Twitter for the latest updates.

One giant step for secure data access

Michael Chapman, Director of Research and Clinical Trials at NHS Digital, talks about our new Secure Data Environment and explains how it is making research into life-saving treatments easier and faster.

 

Why we’re getting our data teams to RAP

Reproducible analytical pipelines (RAP) help ensure all published statistics meet the highest standards of transparency and reproducibility. Sam Hollings and Alistair Bullward in our data science team share their insights on adopting RAP and give advice to those starting out.

 

What is public benefit?

Dr Nicola Byrne, the National Data Guardian, outlines new guidance to support better public benefit evaluations, aimed at both people who use data and those who are custodians of it.

 

A new way to find patients

Technical architect Darren Hickling describes our role in developing a platform to identify the highest risk COVID-19 patients so they could receive life-saving antiviral treatments. 

Our statistical publications, dashboards and open datasets enable important insight across health and care, informing national and local decisions.

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Event: Register with a GP surgery service webinar

You’re invited to attend a webinar on 8 March from 4 to 5pm to learn about the Register with a GP surgery service, including how it improves patient access, reduces administrative burden and the resources available for practices. The session will also include a demonstration and explain our future plans for the service.

Find out more and book your place. Registration closes on 7 March 2023.

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Event: Register with a GP surgery service webinar

You’re invited to attend a webinar on 8 March from 4 to 5pm to learn about the Register with a GP surgery service, including how it improves patient access, reduces administrative burden and the resources available for practices. The session will also include a demonstration and explain our future plans for the service.

Find out more and book your place. Registration closes on 7 March 2023.

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Register your interest to support a new cohorting data service

To inform the development of a new data service, we are conducting some research on how patient data is used. We’d like to speak to those who work in, or have responsibility for, patient data in the health and care sector in England at a regional or local level.

The service has the potential to securely identify groups (cohorts) of people with shared characteristics from national health data, to help ensure the right people can be targeted and offered the services and/or treatment they need. 

The research is confidential and being conducted by an independent research company. To register your interest to take part please complete this short form.

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Event: FHIR and UK CORE Hackathon

HL7 UK in association with INTEROpen and NHS England invites you to attend the FHIR UK Core Hackathon.

The event will help health tech suppliers to understand how to implement FHIR UK Core into their products, plan roadmaps that support the development of more interoperable clinical systems across the UK and provide an opportunity to hack some key clinical use cases using The FHIR UK Core.

This is a free event and it will run alongside Digital Rewired on 14 and 15 March 2023 at the London Business Design Centre. 

Book your place. 

 

Work with us

We are looking for suppliers of clinical systems to be involved with the development of FHIR and UK CORE. Your participation will help to ensure that a standard way of handling interactions between different systems is used, improving interoperability locally and nationally as a result.

Please register your interest by emailing interoperabilityteam@nhs.net.

 

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Updated Guidance to CIS1 Deprecation

The original plan was to retire Care Identity Service authentication (aka ‘CIS1’) by September 2023, and for systems to have migrated to Care Identity Authentication (CIA, aka ‘CIS2 Authentication’). 

Whilst progress has been made; it is clear that not all suppliers will complete the migration within this timeframe.   

Therefore, we intend to change approach and: 

  • Migrate internal NHS England (previously NHS Digital) services to CIA by the original date of September 2023 as some suppliers had dependencies on us to migrate first.   
  • Offer suppliers an additional year to migrate to CIA, with a new retirement date of 30 September 2024 
  • Account for any suppliers who have not completed the migration to CIA or have not completed the rollout of their changes to all sites, by continuing to support CIS1, but at a reduced service level.   

 Currently both CIS1 and CIA are supported to a Platinum Plus SLA - supported hours are 24x7x365 with 99.99% availability target (max of 4 mins downtime per month)  

    On 30 September 2024: 

    • We will reduce the support level for the CIS1 authentication service to a Silver SLA.
    • Operational hours will remain 24x7x365, but supported hours will be reduced to 8 am to 6 pm Monday – Friday and 99.5% availability (target max of 3.5 hours of downtime per month).  
    • CIA will continue to be run to Platinum Plus SLA.

    On 30 September 2025: 

    • We will reduce the support level for CIS1 authentication service to a Bronze SLA.
    • Operational hours will remain 24x7x365, but support hours will be to 8 am to 6 pm Monday - Friday and 98% availability (target max of 14.5 hours of downtime per month) 
    • CIA will continue to be run to Platinum Plus SLA. 

    Benefits of migration to CIS2 CIA 

    • CIA is built using common open standards such as OIDC, FIDO2 and WebAuthn which are widely used and understood within the market. This should increase the availability of relevant engineering skills, reducing time-to-market. 
    • CIA supports new features such as modern alternatives to smartcards, and supports access over the internet via devices other than Windows PCs 
    • CIA is more secure and better optimised for high availability and for the addition of new capabilities wherever demand creates a need. 
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