Sharing your information - 'Better information means better care'
NHS England is about to start a programme of extracting clinical data from GP clinical computer systems in order to increase their understanding of the health of the population and ways in which it can be improved. The information contained on GP clinical computer systems is a huge resource about the health of the people in England and I am sure that interrogating it and searching it will lead to improved understanding of our patients health and what we can do about it. The data is extracted to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC). Once the data is their it is then anonymised. The data that NHS England wants to look at includes details about your clinical consultations, medications, investigations and when anonymised it includes postcode, date of birth and sex but during the anonymisation process the data has your name and address stripped from it. The HSCIC is very closely regulated so that the patients can be assured about the anonymisation of this data. For mor