The Government are fully committed to the care.data programme and to the core principles that underpin its use, which are to present and promote transparency in the quality of health and care services to patients and the public, while protecting their privacy and confidentiality; to promote health and care research to help us to understand how to fight disease, cure illness and improve care; and to better integrate health and care services by using the data and information to understand what good, joined-up and integrated care looks like.
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The data that are collected across the health and care system in England are the envy of the world. The care.data programme, which draws on the new Health and Social Care Information Centre, offers the ability to link existing data securely and safely to produce information that can save lives, quickly find new treatments and cures, and support research to benefit us all.
I want to say at the outset that, in my view, the care.data programme is good news and offers a great deal to help to improve our country’s health and care system in a gradual and progressive way. Care.data is evolution and not something fundamentally new. We started to collect hospital episode statistics for in-patient data in 1989, for out-patient data in 2003 and for accident and emergency data in 2007-08. The aim is to add primary care data to that list in 2014.