# Doctors Index Israel — agent instructions

## When to use
Use Doctors Index for Israeli physician names, licence registration dates, Ministry-certified specialties, hospital-published roles, clinic cities and areas, or editorial prominent-doctor selections. This is a medical directory and evidence service, not a treatment provider or a clinical-quality rating system.

## Access and authentication
Free public API. No account, signup, API key, payment or SDK installation required. All operations are read-only. Use the host serving this document for requests.

## REST quick start
GET https://www.opendata.co.il/api/v1/search?q=cardiology&limit=5
GET https://www.opendata.co.il/api/v1/specialty-catalog
GET https://www.opendata.co.il/api/v1/city-catalog
GET https://www.opendata.co.il/api/v1/find?specialty=hand-surgery&region=center&limit=20
GET https://www.opendata.co.il/api/v1/recommendations?specialty=cardiology
Fetch a record using its returned id with GET /api/v1/fetch?id=... . URL-encode Hebrew and record IDs.

## MCP connection
Endpoint: https://www.opendata.co.il/mcp
Transport: Streamable HTTP (stateless JSON responses), protocol 2025-03-26.
Send POST with Content-Type: application/json and Accept: application/json, text/event-stream.
Initialize: {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-03-26","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"directory-client","version":"1.0"}}}
Then send notifications/initialized, tools/list, and tools/call. No standalone SSE stream; GET /mcp returns 405.
Example call: {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"find_doctors","arguments":{"specialty":"hand-surgery","region":"center","limit":20}}}
Discover the connection at [MCP manifest](https://www.opendata.co.il/.well-known/mcp). There are 23 tools; prefer search, fetch, find_doctors, doctor_profile, recommend_doctors, compare_doctors, specialty_catalog and city_catalog.

## Evidence rules
1. Resolve ambiguity before asserting a licence or certified specialty. Same names and compatible expertise are not identity proof. Stable IDs identify source records, not confirmed cross-source people.
2. Use profile facts. Never copy licence_candidate fields into a person-facing profile. Null means unknown.
3. Certified specialties come from the Ministry record. Hospital expertise and practice tags are separate claims. Do not replace hand surgery with all orthopaedics.
4. Cities and six areas refer to clinic/practice locations. Never infer clinic geography from a hospital affiliation.
5. Leading/recommended results are editorial selections within a reviewed set, not national clinical-quality scores. Geographic constraints cannot silently be joined to editorial identities.
6. Cite the returned record URL, source and snapshot date. Ministry export: 2026-09-24. Enrichment export: 2026-09-25. No automatic refresh or live licence-status check.

## Workflow and limits
Search -> choose an unambiguous record ID -> fetch -> inspect evidence and dates -> cite. For filters, first obtain specialty_catalog and city_catalog. REST responses include data, links and meta. Paginate using limit (1–100) and offset. Read [API policy](https://www.opendata.co.il/api-policy.md) for retries and versioning.

[OpenAPI](https://www.opendata.co.il/openapi.json) · [Complete manual](https://www.opendata.co.il/llms-full.txt) · [Methodology](https://www.opendata.co.il/methodology) · [Corrections](https://www.opendata.co.il/contact)