Details of what activities form the basis of testing for API provider systems

Provider systems SHALL undertake a three-stage testing process:

• Technical accreditation for Spine connectivity prerequisites
• Technical conformance for functional testing of provider APIs
• Solution assurance for functional, non-functional, ready-for-operation and clinical safety

Technical accreditation

Provider systems SHALL be (or have previously been) tested and accredited to establish baseline Spine connectivity prerequisites:

• N3 connectivity / ASID / PKI Certificate
• Personal Demographic Service (PDS) integration
• Spine Directory Service (SDS) integration

Technical conformance

Provider systems SHALL be tested for technical conformance of the following before they can be listed on the product catalogue:

• Spine Secure Proxy (SSP) integration
• Access Record HTML
• Foundations
• Appointment Management
• Access Record Structured
• Access Document

Download: Download the GP Connect Provider Test Suite to help validate the technical conformance of your provider API implementation.

Solution assurance

Solution assurance ensures that the correct level of safety, governance, and security has been accepted, understood and signed off by the organisation providing the APIs.

Important: Suppliers are responsible for their own testing and the clinical safety of the delivered system. Supplier-authored tests must be traceable back to the published specification. NHS Digital’s automated test suite is non-exhaustive and does not cover all test cases/scenarios required to pass solution assurance. NHS Digital expects to see evidence of more supplier authored tests in addition to the NHS Digital authored tests.

Witness testing

Provider systems SHALL undergo witness testing to validate conformance to requirements which can’t easily be automated.