Your local GP practice is undertaking a new initiative to digitise your GP paper records. This simply means scanning the current paper copy to create a new digital copy which can be kept in your main GP record. Paper copies will then be destroyed.
We would like to assure patients that a full assessment of how your data will be managed and kept secure has been undertaken with the advice of our Data Protection Officer. We have taken steps to make sure that the copies created are of good quality and accurate. We have ensured a contract is in place between the GP practice and the provider of the scanning services and we have performed checks on the provider of the service and the secure sharing and storage of patient data. You can find out more about the provider at www.ironmountain.com/uk/utility/legal/privacy-policy.
NHS England has been directed by the government to establish and operate the OpenSAFELY COVID-19 Service and the OpenSAFELY Data Analytics Service. These services provide a secure environment that supports research, clinical audit, service evaluation and health surveillance for COVID-19 and other purposes. Each GP practice remains the controller of its own GP patient data but is required to let approved users run queries on pseudonymised patient data. This means identifiers are removed and replaced with a pseudonym. Only approved users are allowed to run these queries, and they will not be able to access information that directly or indirectly identifies individuals. Patients who do not wish for their data to be used as part of this process can register type 1 opt out with their GP. Find additional information about OpenSAFELY.
As always please do check our main privacy policy for more information and if you have any questions or concerns regarding this notice, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.