Navigating the complexities of England’s General Practice (GP) data can be challenging. At Patients Know Best (PKB), we want to provide clarity on how we receive, store, and display this data so you can make the most of our platform.

Understanding GP Data 

PKB receives information from different GP systems via different API integrations, covering thousands of GP Practices. PKB provides all the data in a single FHIR format, coded in SNOMED, but the datasets vary across GP systems.  So there are nuances to the data itself.

What the patient sees vs. what PKB stores

PKB stores the full codes and structure for each data point from the GP record and provides it all in the application programming interface (API). PKB shows a user-friendly subset in the user interface (UI). 

UI View

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This is the simplified, patient-friendly view of their PKB record. It displays key information including medication details (such as name, unit, dosage and instructions), health conditions, and appointment history.

API Data

PKB allows partners to build applications that can extract and analyse full information that may not always be visible in the UI.

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Dataset differences 

Below are some examples of how data sent to PKB can vary. 

• Medication Details: The dosage instructions are often inconsistent. One doctor might write "Take one tablet in the morning," while another might specify "Take 10mg once daily, with food." The medication’s name and SNOMED CT clinical code are consistent. PKB stores all this detailed information.

• Appointment Types: Some GP practices categorise appointments as "telephone consultation", while others might use "phone appointment" or other names. This is an example of how the same type of information can be recorded in various ways across different GP systems. Because PKB receives data from so many sources, we can't promise that a specific appointment type will always be labelled or formatted in the same way.

• Structured vs. Unstructured Data: Some data is highly organised and "coded" with standardised medical terms (e.g., a diagnosis of "hypertension"). Other data, however, is entered as "free-text" notes (e.g., "Patient expressed concern about frequent headaches."). So records are a combination of both structured and unstructured text data, and PKB stores all of this data.

Testing with PKB 

England’s GP systems provide inaccurate datasets on their test environments. Unfortunately, this means accurate testing can only happen after going live on production environments. There is no alternative to a soft launch with patents who provide their real data for testing.

To help our partners before that stage, PKB have created dedicated resources:

• Test Patients: We provide test patient accounts with sample GP data in our sandbox test environment. This is representative of production data but not comprehensive.

• API Extracts: You can download real-world examples of our API responses from our Developer Wiki, here. This lets you see exactly what to expect when you connect to PKB.

• Clear Guidance: Our documentation provides detailed explanations of how GP data is acquired, stored, and made available through our APIs.

Further Information

PKB API response examples showing in the UI and the API response.

PFS API FHIR Response Examples