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Dental and Orthodontic Activity Dataset: GDPR information

Summary

Why and how we process your data in the Dental and Orthodontic Activity Dataset, and your rights.

Controller NHS England is a ‘joint controller’ with the Department of Health and Social Care.
How we use the information (processing activities)

NHS England collects and analyses data about the care given to patients when they access NHS dental and orthodontics services, such as the type of dental treatment you received. This collection of data is called the Dental and Orthodontic Activity Dataset.

We will pseudonymise the data, then analyse and link it to other data we collect to:

  • understand if dental practices are delivering the services as they should be - for example, we will monitor the treatment provided, patient recall and urgent care services and the equality of the care provided by different dental providers
  • understand the impact these services have on the wider NHS
  • understand how patients use different parts of the NHS for their care, and how their health is affected by this - this will help us to improve the quality and safety of services and reduce differences in health between different groups of people
  • identify potential issues with data quality, fraudulent activity or patient safety issues
  • help us design healthcare that the people using it need and that this care is delivered by different organisation working well together
  • assist NHS England to work closely with ICBs and support them to make sure dentists are delivering high quality care within their region, check how they are doing compared to other ICBs, make decisions based on knowledge of how services are performing and reduce waste
Does this contain sensitive (special category) data such as health information? Yes
Who are recipients of this data?

NHSE shares this data with:

  • integrated care boards (ICBs)
  • NHS Business Services Authority

Data from this collection may be shared with organisations for planning, commissioning and research purposes through NHS England’s Data Access Request Service and recorded on our data release register.
Is data transferred outside the UK? No
How long the data is kept The data will be held for as long as we have a legal basis and purpose to retain it.
Our lawful basis for holding this data Legal obligation
Your rights
  • Tick Be informed
  • Tick Get access to it
  • Tick Rectify or change it
  • Cross Erase or remove it
  • Tick Restrict or stop processing it
  • Cross Move, copy or transfer it
  • Cross Object to it being processed or used
  • Cross Know if a decision was made by a computer rather than a person
How can you withdraw your consent?

Consent not the basis for processing.
Is the data subject to decisions made solely by computers? (automated decision making) No
Where does this data come from? NHS Business Services Authority
The legal basis for collecting this data

Legal obligation (Delegation of NHS England Direct Commissioning Functions - Evaluation and Monitoring of Services Directions 2026).

Where we use this data

internal

Dental and Orthodontic Activity Dataset

NHS England is collecting data from NHS Business Services Authority (BSA) to enable the analysis of patient level dental and orthodontic activity data, in order to provide a comprehensive and comparable national patient level dataset for planning, commissioning and research purposes. 

For more information, see the full transparency notice for this collection.