UK National Health Service (NHS) National Programme for Information Technology uses ebXML Messaging (update)

I’m pleased to announce that a new case study was posted at the ebXML.org Web site:

http://www.ebxml.org/case_studies/NHS-ebMSG-casestudy-041206.pdf

The UK's National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) is the world's largest civil IT project. A central component of the NHS Care Records Service is the Transactional Messaging Service (TMS) Spine using the ebXML Messaging Service OASIS Standard.

The Transaction and Messaging Service provides the communications infrastructure for the National Programme. It serves to interconnect regional network clusters managed by Local Service Providers (LSPs) and national services such as systems for electronic booking and transmission of prescriptions. The technology framework used for TMS is based on a large number of advanced technical specifications and standards. This includes the ebXML Messaging Service OASIS Standard. Within the TMS Spine, ebXML is used to provide reliable messaging functionality. National services such as the Electronic Booking Service (Choose and Book) and Electronic Transmission of Prescriptions are accessed using pairs of XML request and response documents. These documents are transported within the NHS network as ebXML messages.

With an anticipated yearly volume of over 5.000.000.000 message by 2010, TMS is likely to be among the largest messaging systems in production in the world. For this very reason, TMS is also likely to be among the larger systems worldwide that will use the ebXML Messaging OASIS Standard. 

Sincere congratulations to everyone involved in this very significant project!

Pim van der Eijk

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David Webber adds at ebxml forum news:

NHS 'Choose & Book' gearing up with ebXML - 16,000 daily transactions

In 2004 the UK National Health Service NHS adopted ebXML messaging for its mission critical Transactional Messaging Services (TMS) Spine. Anticipated annual message volume by 2010 is over 5,000,000,000 for managing healthcare in the UK from all sources - email, smartcard payments and ebXML.

At the OASIS Adoption Forum in London in November, 2006 the key-note presentation by Dr. Mark Ferrar, Director of Infrastructure, NHS Connecting for Health reported that the 'Choose and Book' system is now generating upward of 16,000 transactions daily with over 1.7 million generated so far this year.

The ebXML messaging is a foundation service as part of the SPINE architecture. Dr. Ferrar gives comprehensive details of the scale of the technology that NHS is implementing and the scope involving already 98% of doctors offices in the UK.