Enterprise Provider Directory

The Enterprise Provider Directory (EPD) is a central directory available online for searching through all medical sites, services and practitioners.

Entries in the EPD can be linked to the Endpoint Location Service (ELS), to make them available for Secure Messaging. Therefore if you want to be able to send documents via Secure Messaging to a service then you must import this service from the EPD.

Address records can be downloaded from the online National Health Services Directory. This can be achieved through the Address Book Search window or through the Address Book Entry window. Once synchronised, the address book entry will be synchronised with the information in the EPD on a daily basis. The fields which will be synchronised are not editable from Communicare as any changes would be overwritten when synchronising, but other fields which are not available in the EPD are fully editable and will not be changed when synchronising.

Communicare will attempt to communicate with the EPD only when prompted by the user via the 'Search EPD or 'Match to EPD functions. It will also attempt to connect to the local installation of Argus at the same time. If either fails, an error message will be displayed and Communicare will re-attempt the connect each time the user tries to look up the EPD. If the connection succeeds, then this stays in place for the rest of the session (until Communicare is closed). If the connection is lost during normal use of Communicare, the system will again try to reconnect with each EPD lookup.

To enable access to the EPD you need a local installation of Argus 6, and the URL and API Key of the EPD web service

To check if EPD is enabled, go into the Address Book Maintenance Form and search for an address. Click on 'Search EPD radio button, enter some search details and click 'Search Now'. The system should search the EPD. Double click on an address in the EPD Search Results window and make sure you can save this to your local Communicare address book.