Is it possible to find out when the PDS patient record was last updated? This would provide us a way of knowing which patient demographics record is the latest.
We have multiple sources of patient demographics available to our system, all are currently spine connected (primary care systems) but we are likely to start working with others mostly in other care setting and these may not be.
So several fields on PDS such as contact details and address may not be the most up to date.
Also can you confirm patients pharmacy nomination is synchronised with primary care systems. EMIS IMI PFS api also contains this data and we’d like to know if these are the same.
I would like to know this also
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Hi Kevin,
Thanks for your question. Adding a way to find out when a PDS patient record was last updated is already on our product backlog. It’s a great point that this could help in determining which record is the most up-to-date, especially when working with multiple sources of patient demographics across different care settings.
I’d be happy to jump on a call to further discuss your use case and better understand the specific pain points you’re facing. This will help us ensure the solution meets your needs and aligns with your workflows. Let me know if that works for you, and I can arrange a time.
Regarding your question about pharmacy nominations, I’ll need to confirm whether the nominations in PDS are fully synchronised with primary care systems like the EMIS IMI PFS API. I’ll investigate this and follow up with a definitive answer.
Thank!
Kitty Shen
Hi Kevin,
Thanks again for your question regarding pharmacy nominations and their synchronisation between PDS and the EMIS IMI PFS API.
- Users can access the PDS FHIR API to find out the nominated pharmacy for a patient, which provides the pharmacy’s ODS code (a unique identifier).
- Based on information from the GP IT Futures documentation, it seems that the EMIS IMI PFS API is used primarily by patients, whereas GP practices use the PDS FHIR API to sync with PDS for the nominated pharmacy.
Just to confirm PDS is the source of a patient’s nomination, so if it is updated by IM1 PFS interface, that will go directly to a GP System which will write that to PDS using Hl7. the FHIR Patient access API will just write to PDS, but when the GPs sync the patient record, they will see the updated nomination from PDS.
On the date of last update, it might be useful to know we are looking at offering an event based solution so that rather than syncing with PDS when a record is opened we would be able to push out changes in real time. a consumer would be able to filter not only on the records being listened to, also which fields they are interested in knowing changes for.
Sorry for being a bit pedantic.
When you say HL7, I presume you mean HL7 v3.
In the wider NHS, HL7 v3 is not generally used and so HL7 on it’s own will generally mean HL7 v2.
apologies for my laziness yes HL7v3 though actually new GP suppliers will use HL7 FHIR v4 Healthcare worker access mode to PDS to the same effect.
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I know this is me replying to me… but I’m working for a different organisation and have the same question.
How do we know when the PDS record was updated?
In our case (regional system), we may have demographic records that are more up to date than PDS So for example we may have newer contact details.
A simple check would be using FHIR lastUpdated field in the Patient resource. Could PDS support this? So if PDS Patient record is newer than our record, we accept contact and address details from PDS, else we accept what the NHS trusts have sent us.
NHS England Organisation Data Terminology FHIR API supports this https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/organisation-data-terminology
(Note this API has put this value in the wrong place - they’ve put it in an extension Canonical - SIMPLIFIER.NET)
e.g.
"meta": {
"versionId": "4",
"lastUpdated": "2024-01-23T13:37:16.122+00:00",
"source": "#42f81a2818154581"
},
Interesting question. Having a “lastUpdated” field in the meta snippet does sound useful. If the only assessment that a consumer needs to make is “Is my version of the PDS record the most up to date?”, I believe using the “versionId” would suffice (comparing it to the version id of the PDS record stored locally), would you agree? Is there a scenario where that would not work?
We can’t expect any of the NHS trusts we work with to know what versionId is in PDS.
They will mostly be using their own demographics records (which are likely to have been traced via PDS only). Things might be different in primary care settings.
Most use their own medical record number as they can’t use English/Welsh NHS Number as a primary key (for example we also do diagnostic tests for unborn children, Scottish and Northern Irish patients - none of these have NHS numbers)
Last updated would be very useful on PDS Int environment.
We are currently fault finding who is changing our records, knowing the updated would help NHS England to track the log entries.
Any consumer system that is updating PDS is required to know this.
Are you referring to those services that only take PDS data and don’t update?
And when you see that data, you don’t know if it is more recent than the current PDS record?
As for communicating about a patient, I believe that they are required by law to use the NHS Number? But let’s not get distracted 
If they’ve done that is outside my domain. My use case is NHS 2 NHS communication around orders, I’ve got two records:
- From a NHS Trust
- From PDS
I don’t know which one is the most up to date, we have to presume the NHS trust because an order normally results from a recent encounter with the patient. This could be wrong, a last updated date would help us know if we are wrong.
PDS is the master data source for demographic data. If it’s not updated on PDS, then no-one else knows about the update.
What you are describing is someone holding alternative local data, but ultimately the PDS version is the ongoing “truth” - until PDS is updated with that local knowledge, it remains local.
That’s probably true in primary care and all EHRs are spine connected - so GP record and NHS England record will match.
In secondary care, the patient will be clerked in at the point of admission, this is why the demographics may be more accurate. (Many trusts I worked at used PDS at admission, but they often don’t update it). They also have an event notification system called ADT for distributing updates.
The answer to this problem is for the trust to update PDS if the patient demographics change, this way any essential NHS clinical correspondence goes to the right place, and other NHS organisations and digital systems can correctly match the individual to their NHS number. It is important that all NHS organisations are made aware if there has been a change.
Yes, that is the rule we follow for English NHS correspondence (plus the patient has to have an English GP) - the issue here is external NHS corresponding with us and they may/may not be following that - I’m asking about handling that.