The Common Assurance Process (CAP) is the process by which NHS Connecting for Health ensures that a given set of user, service, security and safety requirements are being met.

This includes foundation requirements for Spine connection such as Personal Demographics Service (PDS) or Information Governance, or more complex functional and clinically-rich requirements such as GP2GP, Summary Care Record, Choose and Book and the Electronic Prescription Service.

Once initial compliance to a given set of the requirements has been validated, CAP is used to assure that all subsequent supplier releases maintain this compliance. A streamlined version of CAP, known as the 'Supplier Maintenance Release Assurance Process', has been developed to ensure that business-as-usual maintenance releases remain compliant. A 'supplier change notice', or SCN, is the form that is used to initiate this process.