The Interoperability Toolkit (ITK) is 4 centrally-provided sets of documents and associated resources:
The ITK is built from international standards, including W3C and OASIS, and adopts care interoperability standards and technologies from HL7 and IHE.
ITK specifications are independent of technology, implementation and deployment platform. The NHS Health Developer Network website provides several reference implementations for guidance.
For those wanting to access the national systems of the NHS in England, for some of the services, such as the Personal Demographics Service, there are a set of ITK Spine Mini Service specifications.
This item is no longer released on TRUD.
Find ITK accreditation information on the NHS Developer Network.
The ITK accreditation releases contain tools and guidance for attaining accreditation to the ITK Standard, applicable to all system suppliers seeking accreditation.
To attain ITK accreditation a vendor must demonstrate the technical conformance of their product to the ITK requirements specifications by submitting evidence to HSCIC for review. This is achieved using the ITK Toolkit Workbench, completing the Supplier Certified Requirements Coverage checklist, and by providing supporting evidence.
Successful accreditations are listed within the ITK Accreditation Catalogue.
These documents are intended for a mixed technical audience, specifically those intending to develop ITK Accredited Systems, as well as those in the Health and Social Care Architecture communities.
There are 8 documents in 2 categories. The first part provides an overview of both the ITK and ITK Accreditation. The second part consists of 6 documents and covers the architectural requirements for building ITK Clients, Hosts and Middleware, the Distribution Envelope, Transports and Addressing, and the 3 different types of ITK transport: Web Service, Data Transfer Service and Transaction Messaging Service.
Releases of this item contain the requirements for systems sending or receiving messages containing NHS Connecting for Health published message specifications for CDA Documents, such as Discharge, Out Patient, A&E, OOH and Ambulance Reports.
The requirements cover the handling of CDA Documents by clinical applications, and the processing and transmission of these by Message Handling Systems between parties over a variety of transports.
Releases of this item must be used in conjunction with the contents of the ITK Core releases and the ITK Correspondence releases.
Email questions or feedback to toolkit.enquiries@nhs.net.
The Core contains help and guidance on the artefacts and concepts that are shared across ITK implementations. Releases of this item contain service definitions that are used with all ITK transport options. For Web Services, the Core also contains technical artefacts such as WSDL files.
The Distribution Envelop is explained in detail in terms of its elements and attributes, with a schema file and several examples also included. The acknowledgement framework is outlined, with examples and schema for the ITK infrastructure Acknowledgement and ITK Business Acknowledgement.
Finally, the Core explains ITK correspondence metadata, including schema and examples.
This item is no longer released on TRUD.
Releases of this item contain:
Artefacts contained in releases of this item are for information only.
Email questions or feedback to cfh.interoperabilityteam@nhs.net.
As part of an extensive review of the ITK Architecture Specifications during the latter half of 2012, a team of representatives from the Centre and the suppliers agreed a number of changes to the way ITK messages are authenticated.
The changes reflected implementation difficulties presented by the nature of the WS-Security header signing specification given current development platforms, and addressed the inclusion in ITK, of multi-hop and non-SOAP transports. Technical details on the reasons for these changes are given in ITK Security Briefing Paper – Strawman Proposals.
The concessions discussed here will form part of the intended refresh and update to the ITK Architecture Specifications planned for completion by autumn 2013.
Releases of this item must be used in conjunction with the ITK Web Services Transport Specification found within the related documents section of the ITK Core releases.
Email questions or feedback to toolkit.enquiries@nhs.net.
The technical implementation to connect to Spine is complex. The ITK Spine Mini Services provide a simpler route to Spine.
The Spine Mini Services specifications define how to connect to Spine. These specifications let suppliers of third-party software provide solutions for a simplified interface for accessing a subset of Spine services, such as the Personal Demographics Service and the Summary Care Record. The intention is to lower the barrier to entry to Spine.
Releases contain Common Client Requirements, Common Provider Requirements, and specific requirements associated with the particular service being accessed.
This document provides the requirements for ITK Accredited Systems to nationally exchange messages via the National Spine Transaction Messaging System.
Email questions or feedback on this item to toolkit.enquiries@hscic.gov.uk.
The Trust Operating Model is an integral part of the Interoperability Toolkit. It details the Trusts’ responsibilities for Locally Assured Systems and Spine Mini Service compliant systems.
The main audience for the Trust Operating Model are project teams working for a deploying organisation who are responsible for the runtime requirements of the implementation. Suppliers are envisaged as a secondary audience for the Trust Operating Model documentation.
The documentation has 2 categories, Guidance and Governance, and these are more relevant to the Project Manager and technical team within a deploying organisation. Senior management may find the overview document relevant and may want to read the information on Governance and Stakeholders.