NHS: Databases

(asked on 8th July 2025) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps NHS England is taking to verify that derivative analytical outputs from the NHS Federated Digital Platform cannot be reverse‑engineered to reveal identifiable patient data.


Answered by
Karin Smyth Portrait
Karin Smyth
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 14th July 2025

All analytics products created by NHS England, including those developed on the NHS Federated Data Platform, are subject to a full Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA) as part of the design and development process, with further information available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/overarching-data-protection-impact-assessment-dpia-for-the-federated-data-platform-fdp/#18-in-which-country-territory-will-personal-data-be-stored-or-processed

All data used by the NHS Federated Data Platform integrates with advanced Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET). This has been procured from a separate supplier to ensure independence and to mitigate any potential conflicts of interest. This technology ensures that data is processed in a secure and privacy-preserving manner.

Reticulating Splines