Integrating with the NHS Patient Care Aggregator (PCA) API allows your application to present users with a unified list of their upcoming referrals and appointments across secondary care settings.
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6B partners with digital health innovators and NHS providers to design and implement secure, standards-based integrations with the PCA API. Our work ensures your system can contribute to and consume data from the aggregator, giving patients a clearer picture of their healthcare journey and enabling providers to deliver more coordinated, proactive care.
The Patient Care Aggregator API is made up of two services: the Record Service and the Read Service. The Record Service allows healthcare providers to publish structured FHIR resources such as Appointment, ReferralRequest, and Schedule to a secure, centralised aggregator. These records are then made accessible via the Read Service, which enables apps like the NHS App to display a unified view of a patient’s care interactions.
This architecture ensures that patients can view relevant appointment and referral information in a single place, even when receiving care across multiple trusts and organisations. Data is always requested in real time, based on the patient’s NHS number, ensuring accuracy and consistency.
6B delivers PCA integrations from discovery to go live. We begin by analysing your clinical systems and data structures to determine how they align with FHIR requirements. Our team then handles the development of compliant endpoints and manages the onboarding process with the NHS API Platform, including application registration and secure authentication using OAuth 2.0.
We work through sandbox and integration testing environments, validating the full patient journey from data publication to end-user retrieval. We support all aspects of technical and clinical assurance, including SCAL submission, conformance testing, and NHS England liaison.
Once your integration is live, we provide ongoing support, monitoring, and updates as the PCA service evolves. We can also help you scale your solution to additional care settings or link PCA data into wider NHS API integrations like GP Connect or Notify.
Integrating with the Patient Care Aggregator API offers a wide range of benefits for patients, providers, and systems. Patients benefit from having greater visibility and control over their care, with access to upcoming appointments and referrals in one place. Healthcare providers can improve coordination, reduce duplicate bookings, and streamline communication across services.
For digital health innovators, PCA integration opens up valuable new opportunities to enhance patient-facing tools and apps with real-time NHS data. It also reduces the burden of managing custom integrations with each provider, as data is retrieved via a single national service.
We have extensive experience working with the NHS API Platform and delivering PCA integrations that meet NHS England’s technical and clinical assurance standards.
Our developers are experts in building and consuming FHIR APIs, including Appointment, ReferralRequest, Schedule, and Patient resources.
We provide end-to-end delivery support, from system mapping and endpoint development to assurance and go live.
We create modular, scalable solutions that allow your PCA integration to grow alongside your service.
6B works across the digital health ecosystem, which means we can advise on and implement complementary NHS API integrations that enhance your overall offer.
