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 more information click here.   Patients I have spoken to have been concerned at whether their data will remain anonymous. I have been telling patients that the HSCIC is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of data they extract and that if data is used inappropriately that is illegal, there are processes in place to trace how the data is used and if people use it illegally they will be prosecuted and face prison! Click here to read about some recent prosecutions from the Office of the Information Commissioner.

However, if you are not happy with the use of your clinical data in this way click here to email Christine Sanderson, Practice Managing Partner, and she will ensure that we put the correct codes in your record so that your information is not included in the Care Data extraction service.



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