# Social Care Systems FHIR and Interoperability APIs

**Category:** [FHIR](https://openhealthhub.org/c/fhir/31)
**Created:** 2026-03-26 12:21 UTC
**Views:** 20
**Replies:** 4
**URL:** https://openhealthhub.org/t/social-care-systems-fhir-and-interoperability-apis/2951

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## Post #1 by @garybrims

Has anyone got any details on the Interoperability supported by the various Social Care system providers (FHIR or API)?

I am interested in what connectivity and data sharing they provide. There seems to be very little information publically.

Thanks Gary

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## Post #2 by @mayfield.g.kev

The answer from 5-10 years ago was a recommendation to implement this API

https://nhsconnect.github.io/CareConnectAPI/

and also follow those protocols. I believe some vendors may have done this, the NHS D managers didn’t document what was done. This is not the same as the GP Connect API, which is bespoke.

Around that, I (and I stress I) would suggest they follow EU recommendations https://euridice.org/eu-health-data-api/

That is the closest to NHS England previous viewpoint ….. and also stick to HL7 UK Core profiles (which basically means base FHIR)

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## Post #3 by @mayfield.g.kev

NHS England is likely to recommend their version of this https://euridice.org/specifications-eu-patient-summary/ which isn’t an API (it really needs an API for implementation), this uses the FHIR version of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and is aimed at cross border data sharing. 

It could be used for cross-sector data sharing ….. be warned it is a quite involved way of using FHIR, some of the basic API’s in the previous EU spec have more simple methods of sharing documents e.g. PDF in the document exchange API.

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## Post #4 by @garybrims

Thanks
I haven’t looked specifically at the European one, but the International one only really has two additional Social Care related elements - Social History (Observations) and Patient Story. These would be useful from a Social Care context but there are others. Most of these are actually pretty standard but maybe haven’t been a priority from a Healthcare point of view, Goals, Communication, Care Team etc.

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## Post #5 by @mayfield.g.kev

When I last looked in this area I became tempted to avoid the data model viewpoint - healths view was too focused on care plans as documents.

I think the main day 2 day practitioners (nurses and social workers) actually view this from a workflow perspective https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursing_process
Documents are produced during this process but the workflow and communication was quite important. I believe 10-15 years ago NHS Digital also looked at tackling it this way. They had something like this (from https://build.fhir.org/ig/HL7/physical-activity/ - I do like how this guide was laid out)   

@iain + INTEROPen did discuss this IHE guide around care planning https://ihe.net/uploadedFiles/Documents/PCC/IHE_PCC_Suppl_DCP.pdf several years ago.

![Screenshot 2026-03-27 at 05.07.50|690x312](upload://s49VykOiXpoA71ixvNrHqY6ge4h.jpeg)

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**Canonical:** https://openhealthhub.org/t/social-care-systems-fhir-and-interoperability-apis/2951
**Original content:** https://openhealthhub.org/t/social-care-systems-fhir-and-interoperability-apis/2951