Secure Data Environment for patients and the public

How your health information improves lives

Your health and care records help us care for you. They also have the power to unlock new treatments, medicines and devices.

Did you know? 

Lots of different places hold parts of your health and care record. GP, hospitals, mental health, voluntary and social care services can all hold a piece.

This information helps healthcare workers care for you. But it can also help researchers make new discoveries. When we can link lots of records together it helps us spot patterns. This knowledge can improve the health of people who live nearby and future generations. 

Graphic which shows what your patient record looks when you are identified versus how it looks when information like your name and address is removed
What your data looks like to a researcher

What does my patient record look like and what will the researcher see?

We remove key pieces of information such as your name, date of birth and address. Your NHS number is scrambled with a code. Your age, or age group may be visible but not your date of birth. Also your address and postcode are removed and replaced with an area code.
This is so you can't be identified.
In this example, you can see what your patient record looks like before and after its been processed. Anything which can identify you is removed.
Researchers and planners can't see your whole record. Just the pieces of information that are useful to them.
What is changing?

Researchers contact GP practices or hospitals to ask for information out of patient’s records. This might be information like what medicine people take. Access to this information helps them carry out research. 
Researchers have to ask lots of different places for information which can be hard. It also makes it hard to link information from different places.

This means researchers don’t always have the best information to work with. This way of sharing will be stopped in the future. Instead, researchers will come to a Secure Data Environment. This will give them better, linked information which they can’t take away or use it again.

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How we are working with the public
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Data use register
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Benefits to patients
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Privacy policy
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Opt out
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Case study
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Public member recruitment

Health and care information will be stored in a space known as a Secure Data Environment. Only approved individuals will have access to it the data and only for a specific project.

Health and care records are well protected under the law*. Health and 
care staff and researchers must have very specific permissions to use 
personal health information and any organisation that holds this, like your GP practice, is the legal controller for that data.

The controller has responsibility for making sure any information they hold about people is kept safe, secure and private.

Anyone who wants to access your health and care information for 
research or planning needs to send an application covering why they 
want to access it. 

They must:

  • Work in a trusted organisation such as the NHS, a university, a charity or pharmaceutical company
  • Have training in how to use the Secure Data Environment – 
    and how to keep patient information safe

The project must:

  • Meet legal and ethical standards 
  • Be checked by experts to make sure that only the right people 
    and projects can have access to the Secure Data Environment

When health and care information is made available for research, information which could identify you is removed. 

NHS staff who are not part of your medical care team remove information like your name, NHS number and address from your record. This is so we can remove or hide your identity, but still link your records together. Your consent for this is not needed.

Health and care information will only be made available to approved 
researchers and NHS planners for specific projects.

New medicines

Biomedical companies and universities can develop new treatments based on the information from lots of people with similar conditions. 

Improved NHS services

Public health experts can better plan healthcare services, so the right services are there for local people’s needs.  
 

Better outcomes

Researchers can analyse patient data to see which treatments work best, leading to even better care.  

You can also find out more about how patient records benefit research and planning on the NHS England Powered by Data website