NHS Notify Standards

NHS Notify – FHIR Letter Printing IG

Viewing the FHIR Letter Printing Implementation Guide

View the FHIR Letter Printing Implementation Guide

(Manually copied from /output to /v1 - TODO: CICD pipeline for this)

Quick Start

Using the Dev Container

This project provides a ready-to-use VS Code Dev Container for a consistent development environment with all dependencies pre-installed (Java, Node.js, SUSHI, IG Publisher, etc).

1. Open the repository in VS Code and select “Reopen in Container” when prompted.
2. The container will build and run setup scripts automatically.
3. Once started, use the built-in terminal to run build commands (see below).

Using the Makefile

Common tasks are automated via the Makefile at the repo root:

• Build the IG:

    make build
  

  (Runs SUSHI and IG Publisher; output in fhir/output/)

• Serve the IG locally:

    make serve
  

  (Serves the output folder at http://localhost:8080)

• Clean build artefacts:

    make clean
  

You can also run these commands manually inside the fhir folder if you prefer.

This repository folder contains the source for the NHS Notify Letter Printing FHIR Implementation Guide (IG).

• Live site (GitHub Pages): https://nhsdigital.github.io/nhs-notify-standards/fhir
• Canonical (FHIR): https://nhsdigital.github.io/nhs-notify-standards/fhir
• FHIR Version: R4 (4.0.1)

What this IG defines

• LetterCommunicationRequest: A profile on CommunicationRequest for instructing the printing and posting of a letter, including patient, recipient, and payload details.
• LetterDocumentReference: A profile on DocumentReference that acts as a metadata wrapper for the letter PDF, referencing the binary content and providing descriptive information.
• LetterBinary: A profile on Binary for the base64-encoded PDF payload of the letter, always using application/pdf.
• Optionally linked context resources: Appointment, Location.
• $submit-letter operation for submitting a bundle containing these resources, and a server CapabilityStatement.
• Use of UK identifiers: NHS Number and ODS code; SNOMED CT for coding where appropriate.

Build locally

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (for SUSHI) and Java 11+ (for IG Publisher & Validator)
• SUSHI: npm install -g fsh-sushi (or use npx)
• FHIR Validator (optional): validator_cli.jar

Steps:

cd fhir

# 1. Generate FHIR artifacts from FSH
sushi .

# 2. Download the IG Publisher jar (first run of the action will cache it; locally do:)
curl -L -o publisher.jar https://github.com/HL7/fhir-ig-publisher/releases/latest/download/org.hl7.fhir.publisher.jar

# 3. Build the IG (outputs to ./output)
java -jar publisher.jar -ig ig.ini

# 4. Validate an example (optional)
java -jar ../validator_cli.jar output/examples.json -version 4.0.1 -ig output/package.tgz