NHS Notify – FHIR Letter Printing Implementation Guide - Local Development build (v0.1.0) built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) Build Tools. See the Directory of published versions

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Official URL: https://nhsdigital.github.io/nhs-notify-standards/fhir/docs/ImplementationGuide/nhsdigital.nhs-notify-letters				Version: 0.1.0
Draft as of 2025-09-30				Computable Name: NHSNotifyLetters

NHS Notify – FHIR Letter Printing IG

This guide specifies how secondary care providers submit patient letters to NHS Notify’s print-and-post service using FHIR R4.

At a glance

• Primary resource: CommunicationRequest
• PDF carried as: DocumentReference + Binary (base64 encoded)
• Context linking: CommunicationRequest.about[] → Appointment, Location, etc.
• Sender: Organization identified by ODS code
• Patient: NHS Number as identifier (and optionally a Patient resource with postal address)
• Submission pattern: a single Bundle with local urn:uuid: references

See Guidance for details and API for the submission operation.

Conformance artefacts (quick links)

Profiles (constraints you must follow):

• Letter CommunicationRequest
• Letter PDF DocumentReference
• Letter PDF Binary

Terminology:

• Letter Categories ValueSet

Examples:

• Example CommunicationRequest
• Example DocumentReference
• Example Binary (base64 PDF)
• Example Patient
• Example Sender Organization

Full generated list: see the new Artifacts page.

Background on these FHIR patterns: CommunicationRequest, DocumentReference/Binary, Bundles, and UK Core usage.

• CommunicationRequest: https://build.fhir.org/communicationrequest.html
• DocumentReference & Binary: https://build.fhir.org/documentreference.html , https://build.fhir.org/binary.html
• Bundles & internal references: https://build.fhir.org/bundle.html