NHS Digital has launched a new online tech community for those working to integrate systems with national healthcare services.
IT professionals who connect with NHS Digital systems are invited to join the new online forum to share ideas and solutions more easily and more than 200 have already signed up.
The new developer community aims to create an online space open to anyone wanting to integrate with NHS Digital’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) platform.
The API platform provides products and services that make it easier to build and integrate with national systems. These are used by point-of-care and patient-facing applications to talk to back-end applications. The platform provides a consistent experience for API consumers and producers, in order to make integration easier.
The announcement follows a survey by NHS Digital which found that 76 per cent of existing users (including chief technology officers, project managers, business analysts and developers) were in favour of a well-supported, official NHS forum to provide them with help and support.
The idea for the developer community came after a survey, carried out by NHS Digital, showed 76% of existing users, consisting of chief technology officers, project managers, business analysts and developers, were in favour of a well-supported, official NHS forum to provide them with the help and support they need.
The developer community is open for anyone to browse and search for answers. Those with accounts will be able to post and respond.
NHS Digital business analyst Ernest Kissiedu, whose role involves supporting API Management, said: “We realised we could improve the way we do things by providing an open forum to create a sense of community among our API developers.
“We were offering developer support to API Product teams using email, MS Teams, and Slack channels. But every week, we were receiving the same queries relating to the same issues such as getting started on NHS Digital APIs, accessing our path to live environments, and onboarding.
“By answering these questions in an open forum, we realised more people would be able to see the solutions to these problems.
“We want to support our developers by ensuring they have a positive experience and encourage them to use our APIs to develop cost-effective, digital services designed around the needs of our health and care professionals, patients, and the public.”
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