The Transfer of Care initiative aims to improve patient care by promoting and encouraging the use of standards, combined within NHS Digital defined Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to achieve interoperability of systems across different care settings.

The focus of this work is on the digital sharing of structured discharge and clinic attendance documents sent from secondary care to primary care.

Use of the APIs ensure that information follows the person and continuity of care is maintained because services are better connected.

When secondary care suppliers correctly implement against the Transfer of Care APIs for discharge and clinic attendance, the resulting correspondence will be compatible with the receive capability that GP Foundation IT suppliers in England are obliged to provide. Long-term this will create a number of benefits for secondary care, primary care and patients.