NHS Wayfinder Service - Privacy notice
Wayfinder Service - purpose of processing your personal data
NHS England provides Wayfinder services that enable people and carers to access information about their secondary care referrals (such as in hospitals or mental health care settings) and their elective care via the NHS account (either the NHS App on a mobile or the NHS.uk website).
This privacy notice explains how NHS England and other organisations may use your personal data or information for this purpose.
We use your personal data to help you access information about secondary care referrals and your elective care via the NHS App. We will do this by integrating systems with the NHS App to provide more patient-centred care at local and national levels.
Our aims are to:
- create a better experience for you, so you have more control over your care
- give more people more access to their personal data
- give you information relevant and tailored to you
- reduce the number of paper letters sent by post
- reduce our carbon footprint
- reduce waiting times and decrease waiting lists
- make a positive contribution towards reducing waiting times for elective care
In using your personal data, you will be able to do the following in the NHS App, both in mobile and desktop formats:
Access content (via the NHS App to a connected service).
View and manage appointments.
View and manage referrals.
View and manage documents and questionnaires.
Access relevant resources whilst waiting for care.
View wait times and indicate whether you still need a place on the waiting list or not.
Request transfer of care to another provider.
View clinical documents.
Be notified when something in the NHS App needs your attention (via NHS Notify or NHS App Notifications and NHS App Messaging Service).
View waiting times for expected future appointments.
Request a patient initiated follow up (PIFU) appointment or to request to be placed on a PIFU pathway.
Provide feedback.
Link to other patient-facing systems' functionality (that may not be offered as standard through Wayfinder).
You can access the National PIFU service on the NHS App using your NHS login details. This allows us to fill in some personal details for you, such as your name, date of birth and NHS number.
We will not use your NHS login information for any other purposes. You can only share your NHS login information if you have proved your identity to NHS login.
For more information, see the NHS login privacy notice and terms and conditions.
Information we need
To deliver the functions of Wayfinder, NHS England needs to process information about you. However, we only process data that we need to, to deliver the Wayfinder services.
This information can be split into 3 different types:
Personal data, which is data that may identify you.
Special category data, which is personal data that requires additional protection due to its sensitive nature, for example, health-related data.
Non-personal data, which is data that does not contain any information that can identify you.
| Personal data | Special category data | Non-personal data |
|---|---|---|
| NHS number | Appointment data | Portal address |
| Name | Referral data | Waiting time data (aggregated) |
| Surname | Document data | Patient analytical data |
| Date of birth | Questionnaire data | |
| Email address | Wait time data (patient specific) | |
| Telephone number | Test results condition or pathway | |
| Messages from health and social care providers |
Further information on this data can be found in Definitions section below.
Where we get the information from
NHS England collects data from the following:
NHS trusts.
NHS data sources (a central place that collects and stores information to be used for patient care, service planning and monitoring performance).
NHS commissioned services (services paid for by the NHS which may be independent of the NHS).
NHS England may also process data held in other systems within NHS England. For example, the NHS App, NHS login or NHS Notify. Further details on these are below:
NHS England provides information about the data we collect from NHS trusts through a Data Provision Notice.
Further information about NHS England can be found in our privacy notice.
How long your information is kept
Information relating to you may be held for different periods of time by the Wayfinder service dependent on the reason. However, NHS England will only keep the data that is needed to fulfil those reasons. For example, your NHS number is kept for your lifetime, so you are able to access all historical NHS trust healthcare information about you. Other information is only required for the session you are using on the NHS App. Further to this, information is required to be kept due to certain policies, such as the Cyber Security Operation Centre retention policy.
Retention periods:
| Data | Duration |
|---|---|
| NHS Number | Lifetime |
| Personal Data (NHS Number, surname and Date of Birth) | Duration of the user session |
| Database transaction logs | 5 years |
|
Record locators (Unique IDs used to find patient appointment or referral records across systems) |
40 days |
| Infrastructure access logs (Logs tracking who accessed cloud or server infrastructure and when) | 40 days |
|
Edge logs (Logs from API gateways or CDNs showing incoming requests before the app sees them) |
40 days |
|
Application logs (Logs from the software showing user actions, errors, and system behaviour) |
5 years |
|
Special category data Audit logs (Secure records of sensitive actions, for example, data access, for compliance and traceability) |
5 years
|
|
Non-personal data Audit logs (Secure records of sensitive actions, for example, data access, for compliance and traceability) Evidencing message processing Evidencing events processing Evidencing access |
15 months 40 days |
|
Reporting data - management Information reports and events (held in pseudonymised form) |
5 years |
Lawful basis for the processing
The Secretary of State for Health has issued directions to NHS England to deliver the Wayfinder service. The legal direction is titled Wayfinder Services Directions 2023 and can be found on our website.
NHS England is joint data controller with the Secretary of State for the data we need to provide the Wayfinder services unless otherwise stated.
NHS England is also joint data controller, with the Secretary of State for the NHS App. Visit the NHS App webpage for further details.
The UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) sets out the requirements on organisations who collect and process personal data from people in the UK. Where NHS England processes personal data, we need to comply with the UK GDPR.
To process personal data, NHS England must have a lawful basis under Article 6 of GDPR. Having a legal direction in place puts NHS England under a legal obligation to comply with this requirement and so meets Article 6(1)(c) of the UK GDPR.
To deliver certain parts of the NHS App, such as when we are using your cookies, we also need your consent so meeting Article 6(1)(a) of the UK GDPR.
Your health data (special category data) has extra legal protection and NHS England must also comply with Article 9 of the UK GDPR. To process your health data, we rely on:
Article 9(2)(g) of the UK GDPR which applies where there are "reasons of substantial public interest". The Department of Health and Social Care has decided that it is in public interest for NHS England to provide the NHS App to the public. In addition, Schedule 1, Part 2 paragraph 6 of the Data Protection Act 2018 in relation to statutory and government purpose.
Article 9(2)(h) of the UK GDPR which applies as your NHS App supports the provision of health and social care to you. In addition, Schedule 1, Part 1 paragraph 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018 in relation to a health or social care purpose.
Your rights
You have a right to:
- know how and why your data will be collected, processed and stored
- request a copy of your personal data
- correct errors or omissions in your personal data
- ask us to restrict our use of your personal data (for example, if you think it’s inaccurate and needs to be corrected).
You can exercise your rights by contacting the relevant data controller.
For data held and processed by NHS England, see our website for contact details.
If you wish to exercise your rights regarding data held and processed by your hospital, get in touch with your hospital using the contact details in the hospital’s privacy policy, published on their website.
How to make a complaint
If you have any objections or complaints relating to your data, we will investigate and attempt to resolve them. We will make every reasonable effort to allow you to exercise your rights as quickly as possible and within the timescales set out in data protection laws.
NHS England has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO). If you have any queries about this privacy notice or about how NHS England processes personal data, contact our DPO at the address below.
Jon Moore (DPO)
Deputy Chief Executive Directorate
NHS England
7 and 8 Wellington Place
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4AP
Email: [email protected]
We ask that you try to resolve any issues with us first. However, you have a right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at any time about our processing of your personal information. The ICO is the UK regulator for data protection and upholds information rights. Contact the ICO.
Definitions
| Identifiable data | Data that may identify you as an individual |
| Pseudonymised data | Data that has been processed in such as way that it cannot be linked to an individual without more information |
| Aggregated data | Data that has been combined to provide summary information used for reporting and analysis. The data does not include personal or special category data |
| Anonymous data | Data that has had all identifiable information removed |
| Appointment data | Relating to your appointments, this includes such things as appointment identifiers, appointment dates, appointment locations, appointment type and descriptions |
| Referral data | Relating to your referrals, this includes referral identifiers (UBRN), referring organisation (ODS Code and name), referral status |
| Document data | Relating to your documents, this includes document types, document status |
| Questionnaire data | Relating to your questionnaires, this includes questionnaire type, questionnaire status |
| Wait time data (patient specific) | Relating to your presence on waiting list |
| Condition or pathway data | This may include specific codes to identify your condition or what speciality you are in |
| Messages from health and social care providers | This may include new appointment containing key information such as location, speciality, clinician name |
| Portal identifier | These are identifiers of specific portals, such as systems within NHS England |
| Wait time data (aggregated) | This is an aggregated set of data, for example, it may relate to a specific NHS trust, speciality or procedure and contain the number of people on a particular waiting list |
| Patient analytical data | This is non-personal data that helps the Wayfinder service understand how people interact with, and develop, the service |
Last edited: 15 September 2026 11:19 am