Spine

Spine provides high-performance secure messaging that facilitates data exchange between systems and provides a hosting platform for critical national services, including: 

• Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
• Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
• GP Connect
• National Care Records Service (NCRS)

• Summary Care Record (SCR)

Spine is available for all systems that are involved in health and care settings that need to connect and share information across the NHS and access specific services hosted on the platform.

The information held in Spine includes:

• clinical care information used by National Care Records Service (NCRS)
• information to identify individuals accessed through Personal Demographics Service (PDS)
• information around medication used by Electronic Prescription Service (EPS)
• patient information such as current medication and allergies from Summary Care Record (SCR)
• GP practice clinical information shared through GP Connect

NHS Spine enables healthcare systems to rapidly access, update and exchange critical patient information via accessing a number of connected APIs and front end systems.

Example of use include:

• pharmacists in pharmacies login to the Prescription Tracker UI (or their local system) via EPS and Spine to access prescription history information
• GPs access Spine allowing them to update a patient's demographics information or upload the latest summary of the patient's GP information

• paramedics login to Spine via NCRS (or their local system) to access patient data such as demographics and summary care records

Security and trust are paramount when dealing with highly sensitive clinical data.

The current service (Spine ii) is live and has been active since August 2014.

Spine is a platinum service which means it is available and supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

It currently handles over 1.3 billion messages a month, translating to an average daily volume of 43 million messages per day. 

A number of the features of the Spine service have been or are being replaced by a suite of newer dedicated services which provide a modern platform developed and over time we expect the service to reduce in both functionality and scale.  

The first version of Spine (Spine i) went live in June 2004.

Most users access Spine through clinical systems or through the Spine portal.

New ways are being developed to help systems suppliers design IT systems for health and care which can integrate with Spine or access important patient information.

You can now access Spine services directly over the internet. 

We encourage organisations to transition their Spine connections from the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN) to internet-based access. This change reduces the dependency on HSCN and enables organisations to plan for more flexible and modern access routes.

Benefits include:

• easier integration with internet-facing healthcare systems
• greater flexibility and accessibility across devices and locations
• reduced infrastructure costs and complexity
• modern, resilient and scalable connectivity

While HSCN connectivity will continue to be supported and available during the transition period, internet connectivity is now the preferred and future-facing option for all Spine traffic.

Organisations should begin planning and enabling their services for internet access to take advantage of the benefits and prepare for the future model.

Request your existing Spine services to be enabled over the internet.

The following services are related to Spine: