RTS Data

The NIHR Reference and Terminology Service (RTS) is a repository of standardised reference data which can be accessed by any approved client system from within, or outside NIHR. 

It contains two key datasets:

1. Organisations

Data on organisations with which RDNCC interacts, including the NHS, Universities and private companies. Where relevant it also records the hierarchical relationships between organisations.   The organisations data set also includes the entities referred to as 'sites' in CPMS.

2. Terminologies

Both international standard terminologies, for example ICD10, and ‘internal’ RDNCC lookups, e.g. Study statuses and organisation types.

The data are accessible via standardised RESTful JSON web services which are parameterised to allow subsets of the data to be retrieved. These include Organisation Type and Role. It is also possible to specify a date-based parameter which allows download of records changed since a certain date. 

RTS data is structured using concepts which are derived from the HL7 Reference Information Model

• • Types - each entity may only have one Type, which defines its fundamental purpose, e.g. NHS Trust, Company, Charity

  • Roles - organisations may have many roles, e.g. Funder, Sponsor, CRO, GP Practice as Site. Roles are also used to model hierarchies, e.g. GP Practice in CCG, NHS Trust in LCRN.

  • Termsets, Codesystems, Valuesets and Terms. Termset is a collection of related Terms.  The Terms in the Termset cover not only all types and roles, but all ICD10 terminology, Specialty and Subspecialty names and much more.

  • Identifiers (Codes and OIDS) - every item in RTS has a unique identifier.  Where possible, identifiers are sourced from formal registration bodies (NHS Digital Organisation Data Service, Charities Commission, Companies House, etc)

In RTS, for purposes of interoperability, Organisations and Terms have identifiers which are made-up of two parts separated by an '@' symbol.  This is a standard approach used by HL7 and the NHS. 

Example RTS Identifier:               RTD@2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.3.2.4.18.48

• The first part of the identifier before the '@' (RTD) is the Code (HL7 calls this the Extension).  This is usually a reference number/code given to an organisation by the authority which has created/registered it, so for example the NHS creates codes for each NHS Trust so they can be identified.   This code is for the NHS Trust organisation "THE NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST".

• The second part of the identifier (2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.3.2.4.18.48) is the Object Identifier (OID) which identifies the issuing authority for the code.  This particular OID identifies the code as originating from the NHS Digital Organisation Data Service. When RTS sends an organisation identifier to another system, the recipient system knows what the code is for that individual organisation and also knows which authority issued that code.  

While extension codes may be duplicated where, for instance, two or more organisations use similar coding systems, the full RTS identifier will never have a duplicate in the data set.

If you have an email address that ends in nihr.ac.uk, nhs.uk, gov.uk or ac.uk then you can  access RDN's Open Data Platform (ODP).  

One of the dashboards available in ODP is called "RTS Dashboard".  This dashboard contains all of the RTS data that you would find in the RTS APIs.   You can search for specific organisations or types of organisations, review terms and termsets and export data.