Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how tests for COVID-19 taken at Lighthouse Laboratories are linked to an individual's NHS number.

An individual provides demographic information when booking a test (e.g. name, date of birth, gender, postcode and can input their NHS Number too). Once this is matched with a result in the National Pathology Exchange (NPEx), NPEx looks up this information in NHS Digital’s Personal Demographics Service to find a match to an NHS Number. If there is a match, then an approved piece of software is used to push these results into that individual’s general practice record. If this fails, then NHS Digital will attempt to match the data using the Master Patient Service instead.

The vast majority of tests taken for English citizens at Lighthouse Laboratories are linked to NHS Numbers using the demographic information that is provided (name, date of birth, gender and postcode). The devolved administrations are responsible for ensuring this happens in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.