(On behalf of Virtually Healthcare)
During an onboarding call with GP Connect it was mentioned that the Spine LDAP API (https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/spine-directory-service-ldap) would be deprecated and we should use Spine Directory Service - FHIR API instead.
Is that true?
I’d rather not use the FHIR API it has far fewer search features than LDAP. Plus we already have on boarded (we got the spine certificate via MESH) which may save us quite a bit of time.
Kev - yes we are looking to move everyone off of using LDAP over HSCN (Health and Social Care Network) to using internet facing RESTful APIs.
We haven’t yet issued a deprecation notice for the SDS LDAP API, but it will be coming.
When we the replacement API’s be available? SDS FHIR API only covers a small subset of the queries we’d be interested in running.
I think I will end up using periodic CSV imports from ODS.
I nearly asked what functions were missing. We have an internal list, but it needs to be validated. Is your list a fairly short list? Could you post it here?
This roughly aligns with the data design of spine, the main difference is around directory of care services (which I don’t think is in Spine). The previous IHE standard https://www.ihe.net/uploadedFiles/Documents/ITI/IHE_ITI_Suppl_CSD.pdf was LDAP based also.
I believe HL7 UK have asked for this also (they probably worded this as a HL7 UK Core standard but internationally it’s more likely to be IHE as it’s enterprise integration focused).
The use cases are US focused but we have variants.
One additional use case is: In English NHS organisations we should use Data Model and Dictionary identifiers (an NHS England requirement) for organisation (ODS_CODE) and practitioners (GMP and GMC). Spine (eRS, etc) tends to use smart card id’s for practitioner, we need a service to convert between id’s and identifiers (I think this use case is part of healthcare worker API).
I would like the feed option supported, as this is something we (NHS Trust Middleware teams) often need to support with trust systems (this normally gets implemented as HL7 v2 MFN Events).
I might have an active use case on a NHS Regional project (different to the one I started this thread). National version is here
We won’t have sds-user-id from the 23 regional NHS Trust organisations (they are using NHS England specified identifiers).
So we may need to convert from NHS England identifiers to NHS England Spine Id’s.
We are developing a new product and currently trying to begin the onboarding process for the Spine Directory Service – LDAP API (the features of FIHR is not suitable for us), but we have encountered difficulties navigating the process. Following the guidance on the API Catalogue, we are directed to the LDAP API page, which then links to the Common Assurance Process (CAP) documentation. However, the CAP link loops us back to the API catalogue without providing a clear form or onboarding initiation instructions. Could you advise us on how to initiate a request for CAP and proceed with onboarding for Spine LDAP access? Or if we have to go with FIHR, how can I start the process?