NHS service standard – 13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns

Build on open standards and use common components and patterns in the NHS design system.

If you develop your own patterns or components, share them publicly so others can use them.

Why it's important

Using common components and patterns from the NHS design system (or, if what you want is not in the NHS design system, the GOV.UK design system) means you do not have to solve problems that have already been solved. By using a component or pattern that's already been extensively tested, you can provide users with a good experience in a cost effective way.

If you develop your own components or patterns, it's important to share them so that others can benefit from your work.

Open standards help services to work consistently, so you'll spend less time trying to make systems "talk" to each other. And they help you to avoid getting locked into a particular supplier or technology so when things change, you can change your approach.

What you should do

Your team should be able to show that you:

build on common NHS styles, patterns and components
share details of any new components or patterns you create or adapt (for example, by contributing to the NHS design system)
use open standards, and propose a new open standard if there is not one that already meets your needs
if you create any data sets that could be useful to others, publish them in an open machine-readable format, under an Open Government Licence, unless they contain personally identifiable information, sensitive information, or where publishing the data would infringe the intellectual property rights of someone outside the NHS or government