Patient medical data is increasingly shared between GP surgeries, district nursing teams, hospitals, and other secondary care providers to ensure clinicians have access to the most up-to-date information.

Our systems require that patients consent to the sharing of their medical data. Patients must approve which health providers can access their information and consent to sharing data between health services.

For example, it may be necessary to share information held by the GP practice with district nurses, but the local podiatry department may not need access to this data to carry out their work. In such cases, patients can allow the surgery to share their data, give permission for the district nurses to access it, but prevent the podiatry department from accessing it. This ensures that access to patient data remains under the patient's control and is shared on a 'need to know' basis.