Frequently asked questions
- What does the Spine do?
- What are the different parts of the Spine and what do they do?
- How will the Spine support Choose and Book?
- How will the Spine support the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)?
- Who is the National Application Service Provider (NASP) for the Spine?
1. What does the Spine do?
The Spine:
- stores personal characteristics of patients, such as demographic information
- will store summarised clinical information which may be important for the patient's future treatment and care, such as allergies, current medications and adverse reactions to drugs
- ensures the security of systems required to restrict access to the national and local systems
- provide a Secondary Uses Service (SUS), using anonymised data for business reports and statistics for research and planning purposes
- interfaces with all the local IT systems within the National Programme.
2. What are the different parts of the Spine and what do they do?
- Personal Demographics Service
- The Personal Demographics Service (PDS) is the central and single source for patient demographic information, such as NHS number, name, address and date of birth. It can also contain a much wider range of information to allow for circumstances where a patient may be residing with a relative during recuperation, enabling important correspondence to be sent to the correct address.
- Personal Spine Information Service
- The Personal Spine Information Service (PSIS) is the central database containing clinical records for each NHS patient.
- Transaction Messaging Service
- The Transaction Messaging Service is a message transfer service to allow clinical messages from NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) users to be securely routed to the service they are requesting and to manage the response to that request. Depending on the type of message (eg relating to Choose and Book or the Personal Demographics Service), the Transaction Messaging Service identifies where the message needs to be sent.
- Secondary Uses Service
- The Secondary Uses Service (SUS), will protect patient confidentiality and will provide timely, anonymous patient data and other information for purposes other than direct clinical care. This includes looking at public health trends, analysing the effectiveness of treatments and planning the number of beds and staff the NHS needs.
- SUS will support a number of national initiatives, the first being Payment by Results, a key government initiative which is changing the way money flows through the NHS.
- Clinical Spine Application
- The web-based Clinical Spine Application (CSA) will provide healthcare professionals with access to the NHS CRS to gain controlled access to patient information provided by the PDS and the PSIS. It enables clinicians and other staff to enter new information relating to a patient's healthcare. CSA will be used by staff who do not have access to local NHS CRS compliant systems to send and receive information to and from the Spine.
- Spine Directory Service
- Most people turn to a 'directory' to look for something - usually information. The Spine Directory Service is, in that respect, no different. Within the Spine, it is the main information source to find or check for something.
- It comprises the Spine User Directory and Spine Accredited Systems and Services, which ensure that transactions/messages are only processed from authorised users and systems. It is therefore a key component of the security of the Spine.
- Access Control Framework
- Access to NHS CRS data (held by the Personal Spine Information Service) is controlled by the Access Control Framework which registers and authenticates all users.
- It will provide a single log-in and a record of each healthcare professional accessing a patient's NHS Care Record. All information will be provided on a need-to-know basis and based on a user's role and 'legitimate relationship' with the patient.
- It will store details of those relationships between healthcare professionals and patients, as well as patient preferences on information sharing (eg: whether certain sensitive information is restricted from routine sharing).
3. How will the Spine support Choose and Book?
The electronic booking service, Choose and Book allows GPs and other primary care staff to make initial hospital or clinic outpatient appointments at a convenient time, date and place for the patient.
GPs will access the NHS CRS via the Spine to retrieve and update patient records as part of the booking process.
4. How will the Spine support the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)?
EPS will allow prescriptions generated by GPs to be transferred electronically from their surgeries to pharmacies, improving patient information, saving patients time and giving them more choice in their healthcare.
GPs will send prescriptions to the Spine to make them available for dispensing. At the same time, prescribed medication details are added to patients’ electronic records held by the NHS CRS.
The dispenser will obtain the electronic prescription from the Spine via the pharmacy's computer system. Once the pharmacist has dispensed the medicine or appliance in the usual way, a message will be sent back to the Spine, recording what has been dispensed to the patient.
5. Who is the National Application Service Provider (NASP) for the Spine?
The Spine is being delivered by BT, the National Application Service Provider for the NHS CRS. NASPs are responsible for purchasing and implementing IT systems common to all NHS users nationally.
For further information, visit the NHS Care Records Service website.
