NHS IM1 Bulk Extract
Overview
Our IM1 bulk extract routine is a service offered to partners operating in NHS England to access the data held in the GP practice. It is intended to help ICBs and other healthcare organisations extract data in bulk for the purposes of providing care to patients such as local screening programmes.
Requesting a Bulk Extract
To request a bulk extract a partner organisation completes an "IM1 Bulk Extract Request" form.
Once a request is approved, partners will be invited to our dedicated Partner Slack channels. If you have any questions, we will be happy to answer them via Slack.
We will then provide access to a sandbox test environment and sample IM1 Bulk Extracts.
Once you are accredited with Medicus and NHS England as an approved IM1 bulk consumer, then you can request specific bulk extracts from Medicus. Medicus will provide access to the bulk extracts within 10 business days of receipt of a Recommendation to Connect from NHS England (subject to no outstanding disputes).
The purpose of the extract, the data included, and the export schedule will be drawn up into a Bulk Extract Agreement that will be authorised by the GP Practice as the legal data controller. The practice can also choose to revoke a Bulk Extract Agreement at any point to cease further exports.
When a new bulk extract is configured, the full dataset is delivered in bulk via SFTP infrastructure (see ‘Transport Mechanism’ below).
Subsequent exports can be scheduled up to once per 24 hours.
We will review each IM1 Bulk integration every 3 months. This includes working with you to confirm that the justifications provided as part of the IM1 Bulk Extract Request are still correct and up to date. Any data sets that are no longer required or can no longer be justified will be removed from the scheduled extract.
Included Patient Records
In line with our data protection obligations, a patient record will not be sent if the patient is:
Inactive (i.e. not currently registered)
Marked as “Sensitive” on the NHS PDS
Where required, a full patient record will be sent, except for:
Data that is marked as “Confidential from Third Party Organisations”
Data flagged as sensitive by the “RCGP Exclusion List”.
Export Format
The export format used for our IM1 bulk extract is FHIR STU3 which is inline with the NHS interoperability standards.
Disclaimer: Throughout the documentation, there are external links to the NHS FHIR STU3 reference data. These links are purely for reference purposes.
Our IM1 bulk extract service is not maintained by the NHS, or a part of GP Connect. Our IM1 bulk extract does conform to the FHIR STU3 standard, which is also used by GP Connect.
Schemas
You can request all, or parts of a patient’s care record in accordance with the extract schema structure.
The following clinical areas can be provided:
Example extracts can be found on the Example Export Payloadspage.
File Format
A JSON file is extracted for each patient included in the routine.
The file names will follow the format: {nhsNumber}.json e.g. 1472970993.json.
Each practice’s extract will be contained in a folder that is named according to the practice’s ODS code. For example, a single patient’s bulk extract data would be stored in the following location: /ABC123/1472970993.json.
Please note: FHIR JSON does not support deltas at this time. In the meantime, IM1 Bulk Consumers can determine any new, updated or removed FHIR resources by comparing the resources from the most recent bulk extract to the resources in the previous bulk extract.
Log File
A log file will be provided with each extract. The log files are stored in the /logs folder of the target SFTP directory.
The log file’s name will follow the format: im1_bulk_log_{extractDate}.txt.
An example of a log file’s content can be seen below:
Status: COMPLETE
Extract started: 2023-02-20 14:15:12
Extract completed: 2023-02-20 14:16:46
Execution time: 94 seconds
Number of errors: 0
Number of files generated: 5Transport Mechanism
Bulk extracts are delivered via SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).
In the unlikely event of a delay to processing, we’ll let you know by email and the dedicated partner Slack channels.
Pre-requisites for Partners
In order to receive the Medicus IM1 bulk extracts, you must provide an SFTP environment where the files can be delivered. We will work with you to establish and test the connection before data delivery commences.
Before the delivery of the bulk extract can commence, we will work with you to ensure that the target STFP infrastructure is secure and meets the necessary technical, information security, data protection, and service provision requirements.
Changes to the Schema
From time to time, we may make changes to the schema (including deprecations).
Following approval from NHS England, we will inform all partners via Slack and email at least 6 months before a proposed change.
As part of this process, we will provide guidance on:
How to upgrade to new versions of the extract scheme
When to expect the deprecated schema version to reach end-of-life
Support details to assist with migration to a newer version of the schema
Any changes to the extract or delivery process