Welcome to the London Discovery Data Service knowledge base

The articles describe and define Discovery Data Service functionality and technology; the architecture that underpins the data service software, the components that make up the service, the testing and assurance processes, and the resources, technologies, and software that are used to host, develop, and support the service.

Types of articles are described below

 

Information model related topics

These articles provide information about the services, structure, and functionality that operate using the Discovery Common Information Model; one of the fundamental tenets of the Discovery Data Service. This is the starting point for those interested in health data and the information derived from it, and why Discovery may be different from other approaches:

• Basic types of health data - a very high level overview of the types of data held within the Discovery data stores
• Information model services - the technical services that enable the common information model to be used
• Current data sets - the broad types of data received from various systems

Operational and interoperability topics

These articles provide information about how systems can interoperate with Discovery and provide further links into test APIs, schemas, and other documentation associated with data formats for sending and receiving data.

• Secure publication to the DDS - lists the technical interfaces in place for receiving data from publishers.
• Remote Subscriber Database (RSD) SQL guide - provides information for subscribers that wish to host their own copy of data supplied by Discovery.
• Generic publisher system data requirements - provides a set of guides for systems that are publishing data through the Discovery Data Service.

Services

These articles provide information about the services provided by the Discovery Data Service and the underlying functionality.

• Simple Generic query Service - describes a service that provides data on request for data that might be conceptually very complex, but falls into simple common patterns.
• Get health record - describes the service that obtains a fully structured health record about a person, in real time via a standards based API.
• Record publication service -describes the service that publishes data from health records for specific purposes, often immediately on receipt.
• Data set distribution service - describes the service that distributes sets of data for populations of patients.

 

Technologies

These articles provide information about the technologies used in the Discovery Data services, including summaries of considerations and tests that have been undertaken when selecting technologies.

• Graph versus relational database  - considers two of the approaches for storing the main health care record stores.