As a part of the NHS, we need and want to share data in various ways but we also want to protect your confidential and personal information. Data about health can be used for various reasons, both internally within the practice, and externally with various services.
Internally we analyse our records so that we know who has diabetes, heart disease, etc. so we can arrange regular recalls etc., and who is on which drug so we can alert you if there is a health warning etc. This is normal good medical care.
Externally we share data with other NHS services, either in anonymous, aggregate form, or in a way that identifies individuals. Aggregate data might be information about numbers of patients with a stroke or vaccinations, so that the NHS can provide appropriate services. Identifiable data might be the letters we send to hospitals about you. Here we attempt to describe some of the ways data is shared with external agencies. Anonymous data relates to data that is about an individual but that any identifying data is sufficiently obscured as to make it impossible to identify them.