Consider support for NHS API for NHS National Data Opt-Out

[RudolfCardinal]

Reasons to consider: The NHS National Data Opt-Out or NDO (https://digital.nhs.uk/services/national-data-opt-out) is relevant to a subset of research involving NHS data, specifically that requiring support under section 251 of the NHS Act 2006 (from the UK Confidentiality Advisory Group). Therefore, while NHS organisations may often have independent methods (via their electronic records system or separately) for gathering NDO information, support via CRATE may be helpful.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) for this include:

• MESH (Message Exchange for Social care and Health) API: https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/national-data-opt-out-service-mesh (re the NDO via MESH); https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/message-exchange-for-social-care-and-health-api#overview--mesh-api-pseudocode (re the MESH API). This has an "inbox" concept; an organisation has an inbox (just the one?) and there is a messaging system. They note: "The message payload format depends on the specific API. For example, pathology messages use HL7 v2 EDIFACT, whereas transfer of care messages use FHIR." Would this be feasible? Would it be possible to have software that inserted requests and fetched replies without interfering with other MESH messaging by the organisation?
• A FHIR API (https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/national-data-opt-out-fhir) -- but currently in internal beta (needs a specific request to be used by organisations outside NHS Digital/England), and it is currently not useful for our purposes: "You cannot currently... get existing National Data Opt-out preferences for a patient". They recommend using the "POS" service, which appears to be a specific type of MESH message system.

[RudolfCardinal]

Have asked a member of NHS England about the potential for a RESTful API (I'd have thought that would be simpler and safer than the MESH API, which is not RESTful and which requires navigating a multipurpose inbox and not messing it up).

[RudolfCardinal]

Update from NHS Digital (12 Dec 2023):

• They did consider a RESTful API, but decided against it (resources versus usage) and decided in favour of existing infrastructure (i.e. a "batched" system).
• The National Data Opt-Out is part of the [NHS] Spine service.
• No plans to update the API at present. The [development] program has been closed for a number of years and it is in "live" operation.
• Though they will ask the Spine team and feed back.

[RudolfCardinal]

No progress; blending with a generic MESH system sounds unsafe; manual processes exist and are likely simpler/safer in the absence of a proper read-only API. Closing.