NDP Vaccination Service

About the Vaccinations Service

The NCDS holds structured clinical data for people in Scotland. It combines 2 sources of information:

vaccination data recorded through the Vaccination Management Tool (VMT)
GP IT systems information

By combining these, the NCDS is the most accurate source of vaccination data for:

flu
COVID-19
pneumococcal
hepatitis A
cholera
herpes
pertussis
respiratory syncytial virus infection

Who the Vaccination Service is for

Developers can use this service to integrate their software applications with the NCDS and have access to vaccination data.

What information is available

This service allows health and care professionals to:

look up vaccinations with a patient’s Community Health Index (CHI) number or vaccination details by specific vaccination identifier
create a new vaccination record

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) is responsible for updating existing vaccinations records. These updates come through the service desk. Depending on the requirements, the VMT or the Demographics and Vaccinations services team will update the record

How the Vaccination Service works

The Vaccinations API provides a standards-based (FHIR) interface to the NCDS in Scotland. When someone receives a vaccine in a clinical or community setting, the person administering it records this using the Vaccine Management Tool.

By registering this information:

GPs have information of their patients’ vaccination status
in future, patients will access their own vaccination history through the MyCare.scot app

Benefits of the Vaccination Service

The Vaccinations Service records all vaccination events in a common format and store them in a central location, improving data quality and availability.

This service provides the single source of truth for most COVID-19 and flu vaccination data in Scotland. Some private vaccinators may not be included.

The tool has enabled mass vaccination programmes such as COVID-19 vaccinations from 2020 onwards.

Status, service level and current usage

The Vaccination Service is currently Live for internal users.

All our APIs have specific standards that determine their availability and the speed at which we address any problem.

For more details, visit:

Examples of use

The Vaccinations Service will support the MyCare.scot app to provide patients with access to the vaccination history of their flu and COVID-19 vaccines.

To know more about how the vaccination service works, visit our case study explaining how NHS Forth Valley has used the Vaccinations Service.

Get started with this service

To start working with this service get in touch and tell us more about your project and organisation.