Hello. I'm Chris Whitty, England's chief medical officer.
And I'm joined today by John Edwards, Information Commissioner and Dr Nicola Byrne, National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care to give you some reassurance on sharing patient data for patient care.
The benefits of sharing data for patients now and in the future are substantial and we think some clinicians have a greater impression of the risks than the reality.
This video will focus on data sharing for direct patient care.
Quality health and social care services rely on effective communication between professionals, patients, service users and carers across multiple organizations and at multiple points in a person's care.
But we know that relevant information is often not available to health and care professionals or to the individual themselves because of worries about information sharing.
As clinicians, we all have our own professions and specialities.
However, if you are a frontline care provider and you are looking after a patient and you could improve their care by involving other health and social care professionals, you should share that information to provide joined up care.
In most situations, the manageable risks from sharing data are far outweighed by the benefits to patients and social care users.
Hello. I'm John Edwards, the information commissioner. I'm the head of the UK's data protection regulator, the ICO.
We make sure that organizations look after people's personal information. I'd like to echo Professor Whitty’s comments that sharing data helps patients, and reinforce the message that data protection isn't a barrier to providing continuous patient care across disciplines or specialties.
In most circumstances, you can share this information without fear of getting into trouble with us.
This applies to anyone in the health and social care community whether you're a nurse, a doctor, a pharmacist, or an allied health professional.
Data protection is seldom an obstacle to you appropriately sharing information when it comes to the provision of care.
I'm Dr. Nicola Byrne, the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care and a consultant psychiatrist.
Maintaining patient confidentiality is an important part of what we do working in health and social care, and it's what we all expect for ourselves and our own families when we're receiving care too.
But it's important to remember that as health and care staff, our duty to share information to support people's care is just as important as our duty to protect their confidentiality. People expect this.
And so I'm also reinforcing this message to encourage clinicians and other members of care teams to share relevant and important information with confidence to enable safe, joined up care and treatment for our patients and service users.
And if you're ever unsure, please remember that you can always contact your organization's Caldicott Guardian for help.
They are there to advise and support you on confidentiality matters.
Hopefully this has made it clearer that data protection shouldn't be and isn't a barrier to sharing patient information in the provision of direct patient care.
For more information, you can visit the NHS Information Governance Portal, which contains guidance on data sharing and confidentiality. Thank you.