The government accepts all the recommendations of the Caldicott report and highlights that while information sharing is essential to provide good care for everyone, there are rules that must be followed.
The ambitions of this response are that:
- everyone will feel confident that information about their health and care is secure, protected and shared appropriately when that is in their interest
- people will be better informed about how their information is used and shared while they are receiving care, including how it could be used in anonymised form for research, for public health and to create better services
- if people don’t want their information to be shared in this way, they will know how to object if they want to
- people will be increasingly able to access their own health and care records
Dame Fiona Caldicott will be reporting on progress.
An Easy Read version of the response will be published on this page shortly.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre has published new guidance that sets out 5, easy-to-remember rules so that staff can make sure they deal with confidential patient information safely and securely.