Enterprise master patient index (EMPI)

Overview

Everyone registered with a GP practice in Scotland has their own unique identifier, the Community Health Index (CHI) number.

Healthcare staff use the CHI number to identify a person and to access the correct healthcare information about them. The CHI number also enables the retrieval and secure sharing of healthcare information between health and care departments.

Why use it?

The EMPI service provides a standards-based interface to the CHI repository in Scotland. Developers can use it to integrate their applications to provide patient demographics' functionality. This is usually to identify a patient before performing other actions like accessing records in other systems, such as a clinical data repository. Or for assigning the unique identifier of a patient to a record before saving and linking across systems.

The NDP EMPI service uses an international standard for representing patient demographics, and provides a layer of abstraction above the current CHI system, and its impending replacement. This means that developers can add EMPI functionality to their applications safe in the knowledge that the migration from the old system to the new system will be handled at the platform-level.

Who can use it?

There is an application and governance process to be undertaken by those wishing to use the service.

APIs available:

• look up patient details by CHI number
• look up patient details by demographic fields, for example, name, date of birth