PDS to proactively tell a GP System when a Patient record is updated

4 votes

In order to keep the local record up to date in the Synchronisation process, GP Systems have to regularly poll the PDS for "new versions" of their registered patient's demographic records.

An alternative pattern would be that the GP System "subscribes" for updates to their registered Patients X, Y & Z on the PDS. We then don't poll the PDS all the time, and instead we wait for the PDS to tell us that the PDS Record for Patient X has been updated (and then that triggers us to immediately synchronise).

This could be in the form of a webhook POST... or a MESH message... or any other easy to implement way to receive messages from PDS.

Two Benefits:
1. Far fewer "useless" API calls to the PDS when normally nothing has changed.
2. GP System local record kept up to date & in sync almost immediately that something changed on the PDS record

Done api pds-fhir-api Suggested by: Emile Axelrad from Medicus (12 May, '21) • Upvoted: 10 May, '22 • Comments: 6

Comments: 6

21 May, '21
Alex Lord Admin
Good news. A pro-active notification that a change has been made to a patients PDS record, is currently being worked on as part of NHS Digitals National Events Management Service (NEMS). See https://digital.nhs.uk/services/national-events-management-service
10 Jun, '21
Mike Smith
Will this service support other subscribers? I don't see this needs as specifically being only about GP practices so would be good to understand what capability will be delivered and whether other services can subscribe for patient updates in this way.
14 Jun, '21
Tony Heap Admin
Mike, yes it should be available to other types of subscribers, not just GP systems.
06 Mar, '22
Oliver
Hello, this sounds like a great idea; my request is to also be able to subscribe to the nominated pharmacy/dispensing doctor pharmacy/medical appliance supplier pharmacy fields, since realtime updates on these fields can be useful to the nominated dispenser for that patient.
16 May, '22
Jon Burt
Will this provide change of name updates? Really important as part of new birth notifications due to baby birthname rarely including first name until after registration
06 Jun, '22
Tony Heap Admin
This feature is now available in beta - specifically, we have a new event type on NEMS: PDS Record Change - which will send you a notification when *anything* changes in a given patient's record in PDS. For details, see https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/personal-demographics-service-notifications-fhir .