Engagement with GP and Practice Managers on the use of health and care data

Staff engagement is central to the success of change in the NHS, especially at a time of data and digital transformation. GPs will be at the heart of delivering any future changes — as decision-makers, as trusted professionals, and as the people who often explain data choices to patients.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is running a programme of national engagement with GPs and practice managers on the use of patient data — for example, how patient data is used for individual care, the planning and commissioning of NHS services and health-related research. 

This programme of engagement follows the conclusion of DHSC and NHS England’s programme of National Public Engagement on the use of health data which took place from 2024 to 2026.

The engagement is being delivered by Ipsos and Kaleidoscope Health and Care on behalf of DHSC and will run from April to September 2026. Sophie Reid is sub-contracted as the independent evaluator for this work.

We established an external steering group to support both staff, and public engagement. The group is chaired by Dr Nicola Byrne, the National Data Guardian, and will meet regularly throughout each cohort of engagement. The membership and terms of reference for this group are available.

The engagement will use a 3-stage approach to gather representative views on a variety of topics. The 3 stages are detailed below:

Foundational engagement – 400 to 500 participants, providing high-level and baseline views on the topics. Engagement will be light-touch, through a survey and webinar. 

Core deliberation – 110 participants in a representative sample. Participants will go through 8 hours of online or in-person deliberation, learning about, discussing and debating the topics. 

Sense-making summit – 40 participants who will meet online to develop shared recommendations based on the conclusions of the core deliberation. 

We plan to cover the following topics:

Individual patient care - how patient data is used to provide individual care.

Planning NHS services - how patient data is used for routine planning at regional and national levels.

Health research - how GP patient data is used for research into new treatments and medications.

Programmes will continue, as they do now, to conduct specific engagement with stakeholders, the public and patients on their work. It is important they do so alongside these wider and larger deliberations.