Information and guidelines for
adding localised service
directories to NHS Choices
Document Author:
Tamsin Ford
Created Date:
4 October, 2010
Version Number:
V02
Introduction
Thank you for expressing interest in supplying local information to NHS Choices for
use in the Find and Choose services offer.
This information pack explains what sort of information we are looking for and how
you can go about supplying it to us.
What is NHS Choices Find and Choose services?
Local service information is one of the key elements of the NHS Choices service.
Users can access 52 directories of local services from the ‘find services’ home page
http://www.nhs.uk/servicedirectories/Pages/ServiceSearch.aspx (Figure 1).
These directories include:
• Core NHS services (GPs, emergency care, hospitals, dentists, pharmacies,
opticians)
Examples of directories
• Specialist health services (End of life and
published on NHS Choices
hospice services, renal units)
NHS services
• Healthy lifestyle services (stopping
GPs
smoking, sexual health, sport and lifestyle,
Hospitals
weight loss)
• Support for carers
Emergencies and urgent care
• Other community services (mental health, Dentists
Parenting and childcare support)
Pharmacists
Opticians
2.2 Use of ‘find services’
GP led health centres
Local services on NHS Choices are accessed via the
‘find services’ hub page. This area of the site is
Community support
one of the most used, averaging over a quarter of
Foot health
all site users. A large proportion of users come to
Cancer support
nhs.uk from search engines looking for a specific
Renal (kidney) services
service.
Alcohol addiction support
Local service information is currently collected in
Stop-smoking services
two ways:
Support for carers
• Directly from the provider – through the
Parenting & childcare
Provider Management System for acute
Termination of pregnancy clinics
trusts, or Practice Based Editing (PBE) for
GP practices;
Sexual health
• From a third party supplier – this might be Sport and fitness
the organisation providing a service (such
Weight loss services
as a voluntary sector organisation);
Medical equipment suppliers
collecting data for its own purposes (such
as a regulatory body) or collecting data on
Sexual Assault Referral Centres
behalf of other organisations (possibly a
Autism support services
commercial organisation).
Dementia support
Alzheimer’s support
In addition, qualitative data about hospitals and
GP practices is collected through our patient
feedback system.
Figure 1: Find and Choose services hub page
Local information
Local organisations and localised directories are welcome to add local support and
service information that they believe will be helpful to users of NHS Choices in the
areas of social care and community support (please note this excludes NHS
provided services including GPs and Hospitals).
These information assets need to be public facing and abide by the principles,
guidelines and technical formats stipulated below. They can be
condition or treatment specific for uploading against particular directories, or can
be generic for uploading against a range of different directories.
Local information assets or ‘databases’ should provide information related to the
locality, and not duplicate organisation information that is already available
through NHS Choices.
Organisations whose information assets are uploaded into Find and Choose services
will be credited with ownership of their data with their associated logos and
branding details made visible to system users as well as a click through to the
organisation homepage. Local organisations will retain copyright of their asset but
will consent to allow it to be distributed via NHS Choices and through our
syndication process (see www.nhs.uk/syndication for further details).
Guidelines for local content providers
General
Local information directories or databases provided must be patient facing and
should be relevant to ordinary patients seeking information about a particular
condition or treatment. It should provide information specific to organisations in
the locality, and not duplicate organisations that are already available through
Find Services directories. NHS Choices retains the right to remove content from the
system at any time.
NB NHS Choices is a Department of Health England project and therefore will
accept data only from England for publication. For further information about local
services developments in the other nations please check with respective national
health bodies.
Support organisation details
Information assets can be uploaded from the following formats:
Excel; Access; Delimited text file; Xml
Other formats can be discussed with NHS Choices Data Managers as needed.
Allocate records to appropriate directories – NHS Choices would like you to map
your data to our current Directories and Filters where they exist. Further
discussions where there is no direct match to categories can be arranged with NHS
Choices to ensure consistent provision of service listings across England, not just in
one area. Please contact choicesdirectories@nhschoices.nhs.uk for a current listing
of directories.
Supply organisation details
All information assets must be associated with an organisation. In order to create
the organisation and maintain the data feed we require full contact details
including address, phone numbers and email address of the data owner. We also
ask for:
• Hi-res jpeg of the supplying organisation’s logo.
• 150-word (max) description of the organisation.
Minimum data requirements
NHS Choices have developed minimum data requirements through working with
various organisations in developing their directories in Find and Choose services. To
ensure consistency in all directory offerings, we require the minimum data as
indicated in Table 1 (below).
There are also some areas which we can adapt to suit your individual dataset in our
non-core fields.
Please email a test sample of your data to choicesdirectories@nhschoices.nhs.uk
and we can discuss how we can incorporate your data from there.
Table 1: Minimum schema requirements for service listings
Standard Schema
Core details
Address
options
Fields
Mandatory
Unique
Organisation ID
Yes
Yes
Organisation Name
Yes
No
Address1
Yes
No
Address2
No
No
Address3
No
No
Address4
No
No
Address5
No
No
Post code
Yes
No
Telephone
Yes
No
Helpline
No
No
Fax
No
No
Email address
No
No
Website Address
No
No
Description
Yes
No
Details
CORE DETAILS - are
generally standard
across data sets,
although some
organisations have 2
phone numbers, or fax
numbers etc (so there is
flexibility)
Compulsory but
can be ‘not
available’
A few
sentences
describing the
services
offered and/or
the
organisation
Address Suppression
Map Suppression
Dependent on dataset
Postcode Suppression
Non-core
examples
Description
ADDRESS OPTIONS some datasets have the
functionality to hide the
address and/or map
function of our website,
other datasets do not
need such options.
Age group
Disabled access
Facilities
Languages
Opening times
Referral method
Speciality
Dependent on dataset (these are some
common examples)
NON CORE - Some
examples of some of the
common NON-CORE
sections we have - but
this can be dependent
on the dataset differing information is
important to different
organisations.
Attribution of data entries
Each information asset will be associated with the supply organisation and a click
through link will be provided as demonstrated in Figure Two.
Figure 2: Individual organisation page showing link to FRANK homepage:
Supplier organisation logo links
through to organisation website
What NHS Choices will do with your data
De-duplication with our existing data - mainly automated with exceptions sent to
external provider for approval – the time scale for this turnaround will be
negotiated with NHS Choices as needed.
This process ensures that we are not publishing records for the same group or
support organisation twice. Part of that process will identify which is the 'richer'
entry and therefore of best information for users of NHS Choices
Lifespan of assets
Information assets may be updated at any time up to every fortnight. However, to
comply with NHS Choices’ directory policy, all assets must be reviewed for
accuracy and validity within 1 year of their original approval/publication and, if
necessary, revised. Upon upload, an information asset will be assigned a review
date of no longer than 1 year.
If an asset has not been reviewed/replaced or updated, it will expire and be
unpublished from Find and Choose services after its specified review date. Before
it is unpublished, a series of reminders will be sent to the database owner.
Unpublished assets will be removed from all online directories they were previously
included in. After an asset is unpublished, it will not be accessible on NHS Choices
until updated.
For more information, please contact:
Tamsin Ford, Directories Lead
Tamsin.ford@dh.gsi.gov.uk
020 7972 6109 07825 832 609