The Digital Onboarding Service is the assurance process for NHS England to permission use of NHS APIs to organisations and suppliers.
The NHS will integrate APIs with an organisation after first checking if the organisation is viable and feasible with the right credentials, permission and privileges. Therefore, an organisation must complete an NHS API Assurance flow of questions and requirements. One or many APIs are assigned to a product. One or many products are assigned to an Organisation. An applicant belonging to an organisation logs in to digital onboarding via their developer account that is linked to their organisation.
There are three types of use of the Digital Onboarding Service that can interact in this community category:
Producer: NHS team/department lead authoring the assurance flow set of questions and requirements.
Consumer: The developer, business, supplier, company, connecting party and/or legal entity owning the instance of the product or manufacturer that has one or many devices, hardware, software, firmware or apps that requires NHS information via an NHS API
Review and Approver: NHS personnel who review and assess an application, bridge information accurately from the producer and approve/reject the API assurance application submitted by the consumer
After yesterday’s change to how APIs are added to products in the developer portal I have a question and a bit of feedback. Today, I went into the Developer Portal to add a prerequisite API for our active EPS implementation and was unable to add it to our existing product despite the EPS assurance information being listed there. I expect this will be confusing for our EPS onboarding team when it comes time for them to review our prerequisite API accreditation in order to approve us to move to the next tier of their assurance process. Furthermore, all the NHSE APIs are developed as part of the same overall product. When I go to create a new product as directed below, I am presented with an error when using the accurate product name and to proceed must create a new and inaccurate naming convention which will further confuse myself and my teams. Does NHSE have a plan for resolving this issue within the Developer Portal? How do you recommend proceeding in the meantime?
Hi Hope,
Thank you for raising your question and for your email. We have recently introduced an updated assurance flow. For your organisation Epic Systems Corporation, you will need to create a new product. You will not be able to add an additional API Assurance to your current product.
If you’re looking to ensure the name of the product remains as “Epic Hyperspace”, please change/edit this former product to an alternative name and you’ll then be able to use the name of “Epic Hyperspace” as your new product name. Each product within an organisation must have a unique “product” name. The name of “Epic Hyperspace” cannot be used twice.
Please refer to the following page for guidance and do not hesitate to reach out.
https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/guides-and-documentation/the-move-to-a-single-assurance-process
Thanks again.