GP Connect - Send Document

Using MESH

For a more complete introduction to MESH, including details on how to get going if your organisation does not yet have MESH connectivity, see MESH - Message Exchange for Health and Social Care.

Viewed very simply, MESH is like a poste restante service for electronic message delivery. Messages flow around the NHS using MESH as follows:

sender creates message and sends to the MESH server
MESH server places the message in the destination mailbox
receiver collects the message from their inbox
message senders and receivers have two options when connecting to the central MESH server: MESH API or the MESH client

Message routing to registered practice

Where message senders create messages destined for a patient’s registered practice, MESH message automated message routing is encouraged.

Automated message routing enables a message sender to send a message to the MESH server without specifying a destination MESH mailbox ID. MESH takes care of routing the message to the mailbox of the patient’s registered GP practice. This simplifies the task of message creation for the sending organisation.

Rather than specifying the destination mailbox ID, the message sender simply specifies the NHS Number, Surname and Date of Birth of the patient in the message header.

MESH API

The MESH API is a simple REST HTTP API which enables message senders to send messages through MESH. Please refer to the MESH API specification for details.

When using the MESH endpoint lookup service, the Mex-To HTTP header is populated according to the following syntactic conventions.

<GPPROVIDER>[delimiter]<Nhs No>[delimiter]<d.o.b>[delimiter]<Surname>

The underscore _ character is used as the delimiter.

Date of birth is specified in YYYYMMDD format.

For example, when sending a message about a patient:

Mr Brian Smith, born 14 February 2001, with NHS Number 12345678

The Mex_To field will have the following value:

GPPROVIDER_12345678_20010214_Smith

MESH Client

The MESH Client is an alternative means which organisations use to send and receive messages from the MESH central server infrastructure.

When using this automated means of message routing, the To_DTS field in the MESH message control (.ctl) file must be populated according to the same syntactic conventions described for the MESH API above.

Workflow ID configuration

The MESH workflow IDs were updated in v2.0.0 to the following:

GPFED_CONSULT_REPORT was changed to GPCONNECT_SEND_DOCUMENT
GPFED_CONSULT_REPORT_ACK was changed to GPCONNECT_SEND_DOCUMENT_ACK

Providers of data who have not updated their GP Connect Send Document implementation to support v2.0.0, will be using the old MESH workflow ID.

Note: The ONLY use-case for this messages sent using a MESH workflow ID starting with GPFED_CONSULT_REPORT* is a summary of a consultation which took place outside of a citizen's regular GP practice. The NHS are aiming to deprecate this workflow ID by 2024.

Warning: Messages sent to the new worklow ID GPCONNET_SEND_DOCUMENT* could be any type of document - including a consultation summary.

Configuring MESH to enable message flow

The flow of messages through MESH is controlled through rules which are set in the following form:

Mailbox ID is allowed to Send|Receive messages with Workflow ID

For example, to enable a consultation report message to flow from GP0001 to GP0002, two rules need to be set up in MESH configuration:

GP0001 is allowed to Send messages with workflow ID GPFED_CONSULT_REPORT
GP0002 is allowed to Receive messages with workflow ID GPFED_CONSULT_REPORT_ACK

As GP Connect Messaging capabilities are delivered, MESH will therefore be configured to enable actual message flow between organisations. Note that the approach is based on explicit opt-in to ensure particular GP practices receive only those messages which they have consented to receive.