Our commitment to supporting your data is paramount. As an NHS body, patient safety, confidentiality and public protection are important concerns and, like other NHS organisations, we are obliged to act when we identify ongoing risks. 

Patient data is not only vital for managing an individual’s care, it also plays an important role in other ways: planning health services, improving diagnosis and treatment and evaluating the effectiveness of policy. These ‘secondary uses’ of data offer significant opportunities to improve care, especially if advances in technology and data analysis can be harnessed.

Safeguards governing the secondary use of patient data have been strengthened in recent years and will be bolstered by the implementation of a new National Data Opt-Out alongside the introduction of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and Data Protection Act 2018 on 25 May 2018.

National policy has to keep a balance between responding to legitimate public concern about the security and confidentiality of data and enabling data to be shared and used by NHS organisations and third parties.

It is also essential that NHS national bodies are transparent with the public about how patient data is used.

The Data Protection Act places a responsibility on Bolton NHS Foundation Trust as a data controller to ensure that your information is collected and managed in a secure and confidential way.

The Act also provides you with a right of access to personal information that the Trust holds about you (this applies equally to service users, members of staff and any other individual that the Trust may hold information about in its legal capacity).