National Data Guardian: a consultation on priorities

In December 2018 Parliament passed a law to place the role of the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care (NDG) on a statutory footing. This law gives the NDG the ability to issue guidance about the processing of health and adult social care data. Public bodies, such as hospitals, GPs, care homes, planners and commissioners of services, will have to take note of guidance that is relevant to them. So will organisations such as private companies or charities which are delivering services for the NHS or publicly funded adult social care.

This consultation will help us decide what the key priorities should be for the NDG as the role moves into this next phase, so that we can continue our work to ensure the safe and appropriate use of health and care data.

The consultation sets out four proposed priorities and potential areas of interest for the NDG within each of these.

We should make clear that the NDG cannot deliver these broad and ambitious priorities alone. That will require many organisations working together over the coming years. And we should add that these are not the only things the NDG will do; we will also continue to respond to the many requests that we receive for advice and guidance.

We now want to receive feedback from patients, the public, health and care professionals and other stakeholders on these priorities. Tell us what you think. Have we got this right? What have we missed? What should we be doing and who should we be working with to progress these priorities?