Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing patient records of diagnostic results held by charities to be consolidated in a central NHS database.

Patient records in the National Health Service are held in different systems, including general practice IT systems, and electronic patient records held by trusts.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has announced the intention for there to be a single patient record that both empowers patients by giving them access to their records, and gives professionals access to the information they need to make the best-informed decisions when delivering care and treatment. We have begun engaging with the public to help shape our plans, including what information they would want to see included in a single record.