The NHS Spine is the set of national databases and connectivity used by the NHS to provide key information about a patient's health and care to all NHS organisations. The Spine is part of the National Programme for IT implementation and enables Choose and Book, PACS and CRS, amongst others.

Many organisations need to access the Spine, notably private care providers who are supply services to the NHS under the Extended Choice Network. Carelink is able to provide hosting and connectivity services for private care providers wishing  to connect to the N3 network and to the NHS Spine.

We have an established hosting platform providing high performance, dual network connectivity (internet and N3 networks) for a secure, resilient and fully managed environment. Existng clients use this to run a full range of applications, from simple websites through to high performance, high load applications running on resilient server farms. We have an excellent working relationship with Connecting for Health to facilitate rapid approval of new applications on the network.

In addition we are a NHS Spine Aggregator, providing the ability for our clients to achieve connections to the Spine Services. Our experience in this field, our broad technology expertise (covering infrastructure, security, processes and application design) and our long standing relationship with CfH allows us to offer the consulting, approval and build out activities needed to establish these Spine connections.

Obtaining a Spine connection is a somewhat complex process, involving a consultation with Connecting for Health, solution and security design, networking and implementation of both technology and policies and procedures. Carelink's experienced team provide the full range of services to enable organisations achieve the connectivity they need.