Introducing eRS SmartSync: A Direct Integration with NHS eRS

Cinapsis is launching eRS SmartSync, a new integration that connects Cinapsis directly with the NHS e-Referral Service. Built in partnership with NHS England, it gives ICBs and trusts a way to run their Advice & Refer programme at scale, from Cinapsis, while updating eRS which stays exactly where it needs to be: the national system of record.

Why now

Advice & Refer volumes are rising across every ICB, driven by the same pressures: more structured triage, the growth of Single Points of Access, and a push toward left-shifted, community-based care. At the same time, NHS England is tightening how Advice and Guidance has to operate within eRS, with new requirements for third-party tools coming into effect from October 2026.

Those two things have been on a collision course for a while. Organisations need to triage at a volume that eRS's native Advice and Guidance functionality wasn't built for, but they also need to stay properly aligned with eRS as the system everything ultimately has to flow through. SmartSync exists to make that a reality"

How it works

eRS SmartSync runs on bilateral APIs built jointly with NHS England, creating a genuine two-way connection between Cinapsis and eRS. Clinicians manage and triage cases inside Cinapsis; that activity is synced back into eRS automatically, so referral and Advice & Refer records stay fully up to date and visible nationally, without anyone re-entering the same information twice.

It also connects to the NHS Spine, pulling patient demographics and clinical history directly into the case a specialist is reviewing. That extra context matters more than it might sound: a specialist with the full picture is far less likely to request more information or default to a face-to-face appointment simply to fill in the gaps. Where local agreements allow it, SmartSync can also notify patients directly of the outcome of their referral or advice request, which has already taken a meaningful volume of follow-up contact off GP practices using it.

What it means in practice

Early data from organisations using SmartSync shows cases being managed more than four times faster than through e-RS alone, while full visibility of every case is maintained inside eRS itself. For trusts, unlike e-RS, all activity can flow into the local EPR, so oversight isn't limited to whichever system happens to be open or accepted for an appointment..

For ICBs managing the shift toward Advice & Refer at scale, SmartSync is designed to flex around local pathway design and Single Point of Access (SPOA) models while keeping everything nationally consistent, rather than asking every organisation to fit the same template.

Built for where the NHS is heading

SmartSync wasn't built as a workaround. It's a direct response to where national policy is already pointing: the NHS Ten Year Plan's push toward community-based, left-shifted care, the expansion of Advice & Refer as the default first step before referral, and a clear national expectation that eRS remains the consistent record of what's happened, regardless of which platform clinicians actually work in day to day.

For organisations already using eRS, that means SmartSync isn't a separate system to adopt and manage. It's the integration that makes the workflow clinicians actually use, and the national record NHS England needs, the same thing.

Available now

eRS SmartSync is available to NHS organisations using Cinapsis today, and can be configured to fit existing local referral pathways and SPoA models. To see it against your own referral and Advice & Refer volumes, get in touch with the Cinapsis team to arrange a walkthrough.

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