Change Control

This section details a change control process for use with the NHS England standard. The change control process is part of the overall configuration management.

Overview of Process

Change Control Roles

• Requester - Any individual or team requesting a change to an existing FHIR asset in the NHS England IG or requesting a new FHIR asset to be added to the NHS England IG.
• NHS England IOPS Team- Individuals who are involved in the NHS England FHIR assets development and/or authoring guidance contained in the NHS England Implementation Guide.
• Stakeholder – Any individual or team using the NHS England IG or involved in FHIR implementation and/or design within NHS England.

Requesting a Change to the NHS England IG

Requests for a change to the NHS England IG shall be made using the create issue option in Simplifier if it’s not a project or programme which is formally engaging with the NHS England IOPS Team. Requests may be from an individual or team looking to use the NHS England IG for an implementation or for an issue reported by a member of the development team. The same approach is used to feedback on issues by participants in the Clinical and Technical Assurance process.

Navigation to the NHS England IG Project

The NHS England IG Simplifier project is located here.

Requests for new NHS England IG FHIR assets can be raised as an issue at the NHS England IG project level in Simplifier. The requests shall indicate the use case or details of the requirement as to why the new asset is needed.

Creating a Simplifier Issue at Project Level

The NHS England IG uses Simplifier for issue tracking and maintenance. Although the NHS England IG is in the public domain, you will need to create an account and login to raise issues.

Creating a Simplifier account is done by going to https://simplifier.net/ and using the sign-up option on the top right of the page. An email address and a chosen password are the only details needed to set up an account.

To create a issue at the project level, navigate to the project. Once you are in the project, click on the issues tab and then the create button to create the issue.

Login to Simplifier

Logging in to your Simplifier account is required to raise issues. Browse to https://simplifier.net/ and use the login option on the top right of the page, then enter the chosen credentials.

Change to an existing NHS England IG Asset

When the change request is for a change to an existing NHSE IG FHIR asset, the preferred approach is to raise the issue at the level of the relevant asset.

Create a Simplifier issue at NHS England IG Asset level

It is acknowledged that not everyone will have enough knowledge of FHIR Implementation Guides or Simplifier to log an issue to the correct Simplifier resource, therefore logging at the project level is allowable, if this is the case. However, issue logging at asset level is the preferred approach, as it makes triage of issues easier.

Note: Simplifier refers to everything as a resource whether it’s an image, example or FHIR profile and provides a mechanism to filter on type.

Step 1 - How to search and filter

How to search and filter in Simplifier illustration

To search for a particular asset, for example to find the Patient profile, filter by resource category "Profiles" (tick the box alongside Profiles), add the word "Patient" in the search box and hit return. This will bring up a link to the Patient profile which will take you to a page with a view of the Patient profile.

Once the required Simplifier resource page is found, the last tab on the page is the issues tab. Clicking on this will bring up a page where a new issue should be raised by clicking the New Issue button.

Step 2 - Create new issue

Create new issue illustration

This will only require a title and the details of the issue or comment. All other issues logged for this Simplifier resource will be available from this page and you can check these or find out whether this issue has already been logged, if required.

Step 3 - New issue information required

New issue information required illustration

If you cannot locate the Simplifier resource, or it is not appropriate to log an issue at the Simplifier resource level, then you should raise an issue at the project level. In this case, the title and/or issue text should identify which part of the NHSE IG Implementation is the subject of the issue being raised. See the Creating a Simplifier Issue at Project Level section for how to do this.

Requesting a new NHS England IG Asset

Issues for new NHS England IG FHIR assets can be raised at the NHS England IG project level the issue shall indicate the use case or details of the requirement as to why the new asset is needed. Projects or Programmes may also raise requests for new or amended FHIR assets.

Creating a Simplifier Issue at Project Level

To create a issue at the project level, navigate to the project. Once you are in the project, click on the issues tab and then the create button to create the issue.

Issue Triage by NHS England IG Development Team

Issues will be triaged by the IOPS Team and all agreed changes will be added to draft release which will then enter a Clinical and technical assurance sprint and released on completion.

The response time for issues to be initially triaged does not have a formal service level agreement in place but should be responded to in a timely manner. This is managed by the Interoperability Standards Team (IOPS) using the Interoperability Team's mailbox, which receives auto-notifications from Simplifier on a daily basis. The mailbox is monitored daily by IOPS and initial triage will be done within a day or two, except when the issue has been raised as part of the Clinical and Technical Assurance process.

Note: The triage of issues raised as part of Clinical and Technical Assurance process is done at the end of the Clinical and Technical Assurance process as a batch. This enables more efficient triage of issues and the identification of dependencies and issue duplication.

Triage of Non-Clinical and Technical Assurance process issues

The triage process for issues raised as part of the Clinical and Technical Assurance process is done as a batch process by IOPS at the end of the process. The issues raised are filtered to remove duplicates or minor issues such as typos or minor technical errors. The remaining issues are taken forward to the Clinical and Technical Assurance follow up meeting for discussion, agreement, and resolution.

Approval of issue

Once a change request is accepted, the issue is added to the NHS England IG Development Backlog. The requester will be notified via Simplifier by update of the issue. The issue will not be closed at this point, only when the development work has been completed.

Development Backlog

The NHS England IG Development backlog is where all the development work items are recorded and tracked. The work items are maintained using a tool called JIRA. All the work items in JIRA will be traceable back to Simplifier. The development is carried out using an agile type of methodology and managed on a Kanban board. The NHS England IG development backlog is an internal process which only the IOPS team have access to, however this information is mirrored in the Simplifier issues for consumption by the stakeholders. The requester will be emailed whenever there is an update to the Simplifier issue.

Rejection of issue

If a request for change is rejected, then the Simplifier issue is updated with all the information required to inform the requester why it was rejected. Further calls or emails may also be used to explain the reason for rejection, if required, depending on the complexity of the issue.

Development Cycle

Overview

The NHSE IG development is driven by requests for change which can come from many sources. The Change control section gives details about how this is managed.

Development Cycle

The development cycle is fed from two main sources:

1. The Clinical and Technical Assurance Process
2. Issues raised by the stakeholders in Simplifier

See the Change Control page for full details on the change control process.

Asset Types

The first part of the development cycle is to identify the type of FHIR asset(s) and any dependencies, for example if the change is to create a new profile then there will be a need to identify any related resources required such as extensions, examples, ValueSets guide pages etc. This is required to size of the development so that resources and timescales can be planned. The required changes are then added to a JIRA backlog which is used by the IOPS Team to schedule the development work.

Release Following Changes

Releases timings of the NHS England IG and FHIR assets will be decided by IOPS and the team will decide on the actual scheduling based of a number of factors for example:

• Available resource
• Program delivery time scales

Internal Review

Once the change has been done the IOPS will carry out an internal review and rework as necessary until the development is of the quality required. The page on Asset Design. gives more information on the principles and design of FHIR assets which are used during internal review.

External Review

There is no external review until the changes are included in a pre-release as part of the C&TA but as all development is done in the public domain and feedback on any change is always possible via Simplifier.

Overview of Release Cycle

The section details the NHS England IG release cycle and how the various versions are defined.

Overview Of Cycle

The diagram below illustrates how the NHS England IG Release cycle works and is an abstract view of the way it is released. This is an evolving process, and the diagram only shows one release cycle of a sequence of a repeating process.

1. A Use Case or Simplifier Issue is usually the starting point for a release. A Use Case will come from an NHS England stakeholder, a project or programme of work.

2. The IOPS development team will analyse the requirements and develop draft FHIR Assets.

3. NHS England Stakeholders will then be involved during C&TA to discuss the Use Case, issues and proposed solutions. Any rework required is completed.

4. The NHS England IG is released on the next version.