Information Sharing (Caldicott Review)

Thursday 12th September 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

Today I am publishing the Government’s response to Dame Fiona Caldicott’s review of information sharing. This review was recommended by the Future Forum on information which reported in January 2012.

I am grateful to Dame Fiona and her panel and to the many people who provided valuable input into her review. Building on the wealth of experience, viewpoints and insights gained through the review and the preceding NHS Future Forum’s work, this document sets out the overall ambition and actions to transform how our health and our care services use and share information to the benefit of patients and service users.

For citizens, patients and users of care services, this response sets out how a new approach to information sharing across health and care can support more joined up, safer, better care for us. Dame Fiona’s review and our response look at actions for clinicians and other care professionals, managers, commissioners, councillors, researchers, and many others.

There are four key themes in the response:

patient and citizen rights—they should have confidence in how their information is handled through knowing how it is used and shared and how to object and through having access to their electronic care records;

improving sharing for direct care—appropriate and legal data sharing to drive integrated, joined-up, person-centred and safer care for people (where information governance rules have, in the past, been seen as a barrier);

improving sharing for other purposes—the importance of information for research, commissioning and public health and improving practice in this area, recognising this can only be done effectively if people are given a say in how information about them is used; and

better protection for information boards and other leadership groups will take responsibility for good information practices in their organisations, professionals will be consistent in the rules they apply and front-line staff will have improved training and education on information sharing and confidential information.

In summary, this response sets out the overall ambition and the early actions that will enable better information sharing to support our health and our care services to meet our needs and expectations, for now and the future.

“Information: To share or not to share? The Information Governance Review” and “Information: To Share or not to share, Government Response to the Caldicott Review” have been placed in the Library. Copies are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office.