The NHS will begin to share GP data from Wednesday 1st September 2021. The new General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) aims to reduce the burden on GP practices, allowing doctors and other staff to focus on patient care.
The NHS will share details about diagnoses, symptoms, medications, immunisations as well as your gender and ethnicity. They will not share your name and address or any written notes your GP may have.
Patient data collected from general practice is needed to support a wide variety of research and analysis to help run and improve health and care services. Whilst the data collected in other care settings such as hospitals is valuable in understanding and improving specific services, it is the patient data in general practice that helps us to understand whether the health and care system as a whole is working for patients.
The General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) has been collecting data for over 10 years. GPDPR will replace it and do more in helping to support the planning and commissioning of health and care services, the development of health and care policy, public health monitoring and interventions (including coronavirus (COVID-19) and enable many different areas of research.
If you wish, you can opt-out by downloading this form and sending it to your GP practice. You can also find the form and find more information on the digital.nhs.uk website
You can also opt-out by registering on the National Data Opt-out at nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters.
The NKF has information about the data sharing at kidney.org.uk/news/nhs-digital-to-begin-sharing-gp-data.