Tech Talk Feed

How we're using Proxygen to transform API development

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Jonathan Eagle) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:15:11 GMT

Jonathan Eagle explains how the NHS England API Management team tackled some of the biggest pain points in API development in the NHS – and how a new tool called Proxygen is cutting integration time with the NHS API Platform from weeks to days.

How we’re modernising electronic prescribing

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Andy Harrison) — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:22:08 GMT

Most prescriptions are still paper-based in secondary care. Business analyst Andy Harrison describes the technical groundwork we’ve laid to allow these settings to go digital.

The little green FP10 paper prescriptions have all but disappeared in primary care. 18 years ago, we launched the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) and it has since become an indispensable tool for primary care teams. Nearly all GP practices use it and about 95% of primary care prescriptions are now sent electronically. Last year, that amounted to 1 billion items dispensed using the service. It’s a safer, faster and more convenient way to prescribe.

Our new approach to migrating Spine to the cloud

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (NHS Digital) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 09:35:57 GMT

Mark Burton, Lead Delivery Manager for the Spine Futures programme, explains why we’re accelerating the migration of Spine services into the cloud and why we need NHS organisations and healthcare suppliers to support the move.

In the decade since the NHS Spine was launched, digital health and care services have become significantly larger, much more complex and more central to NHS provision. The Spine platform provides critical healthcare infrastructure and we must modernise to keep up with the demands being placed on it.

What does good look like for APIs?

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Matthew Firth) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 12:07:13 GMT

Matthew Firth describes our best practice policies around APIs – and how the most important one is not about the technical aspects of the work.

For the past 3 years, we have been on a mission to make integration easier within the NHS for people building healthcare technology.

Our API Developer Community is growing

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (NHS Digital) — Thu, 15 May 2025 15:37:46 GMT

Thasmim Ali, Product Owner of our API Developer Community, talks about how we’ve improved support for teams integrating with our products and services – and outlines our next steps.

The Developer Community provides an open and transparent forum for members to share knowledge, learn, and collaborate on problems related to API management. We launched the community in alpha phase in November 2022, and we’ve seen membership grow to more than 450 users since then.

What we have learned about retiring APIs

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Matthew Firth) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:35:49 GMT

Business analyst Matthew Firth gives an update on what NHS Digital has been doing to progress the API ‘sunsetting’ strategy to retire some of our APIs over the last year.

Last year we published our blog ‘What happens when we ‘sunset’ our APIs ?’ in which Munish Jokhani explained how we actively deprecate (where we advise of our intention to retire the API while retaining all existing service levels) and retire our APIs, and the effect this had on developers. By working with our suppliers and engaging them early in the process, we found that we were able to agree and align the retirement dates so that we met our suppliers’ requirements.

How we're supporting product teams

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Ernest Kissiedu) — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 11:29:39 GMT

Making it easier to get help and support is a guiding principle for our API Management (APIM) team. Ernest Kissiedu, a business analyst in the team, explains the new approach to supporting software developers working in health and care.

Ensuring that the API platform is as self-serve as possible, with simple and reliable support provided when needed, is top of the list for our team. If our developers have a positive experience, they are more likely to use our APIs to develop cost-effective, digital services designed around the needs of our health and care professionals, patients, and the public.

Discovering data standards together

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Bharat Sharma) — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:21:01 GMT

Bharat Sharma, Senior Product Manager in the Standards and Interoperability team at NHS England, explains what they are doing to improve access to standards across the NHS.

It’s a bit like the old philosophical question ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’:

If a standard is published but people don’t know about it, is it a standard?

Why we're opening up our API and integration catalogue

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Matthew Firth) — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 16:04:32 GMT

Business analyst Matthew Firth talks about the expansion of NHS Digital’s application programming interface (API) and integration catalogue which, for the first time, will now include external APIs.

Historically, we have only represented NHS Digital APIs in our API and integration catalogue. The reason is that the Developer hub was set up as a space where API consumers can learn about the NHS Digital onboarding journey and identify the APIs which they’d like to onboard with. It made sense to only represent our NHS Digital APIs in there and aimed to avoid confusion or dilute our onboarding journey for external suppliers and partners.

6 things we learned from the COVID-19 home testing rollout

enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk (Richard Taylforth) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:59:46 GMT

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the home testing service enabled millions to order PCR tests and rapid lateral flow tests to their homes. Richard Taylforth, a Delivery Manager who worked on the service, explains how we did it.

The home testing service played a critical role in the national pandemic response, enabling people to test themselves quickly and accurately.