March 8, 2017

Media roundtable on sharing patient data for health, care and research

The purpose of the meeting was primarily to introduce science and health reporters to a brand new organization called Understanding Patient Data which is supported by much of the medical research community in the UK.  The breakfast meeting was an opportunity to meet the CEO and head of policy at the new organization and to question them about their future plans.

There is huge potential to make better use of patient data for individual care, and to improve health, care and services across the NHS, but we will only be able to realise the opportunity if both the public and clinicians can trust the system. There must be robust safeguards to protect patient confidentiality, and there must be transparency about how data is used. At the moment, less than one third of the population feel they know how health data is used in the NHS. We want to change that. Understanding Patient Data has been set up to support conversations with the public, patients and healthcare professionals about how health and care data is used,  providing resources for people to find out more.