Part of Public attitudes to data in the NHS and social care
Conclusion
Data Saves Lives: the data strategy for health and social care set out ambitious plans plans to harness the potential of data in health and care in England, while maintaining the highest standards of privacy and ethics. Improving trust in the health and care system’s use of data is at the core of the strategy. Our vision is that the public have confidence in how their data will be handled, and are happy for their data to be used to improve the care that they and others receive.
To continue to build this public confidence, we need to ensure that our policies and programmes reflect how people think and feel about data. By identifying six attitudinal segments within the population, this research helps us better understand public attitudes to data in health and social care, and allows us to ensure our policies and programmes respond to these different groups. NHS England are already using the results from this research to make sure we hear from different perspectives during our large-scale national engagement on data. This engagement programme will be running throughout 2024/25, and the public will be asked to help shape data policy for health and care.
Between the six segments we identified, there were distinct differences in both their understanding of the benefits of using health data and in their concerns over how this data could be misused. Some were more concerned at an individual level; that is, the benefit to their own care or the risk of their personal data being compromised. Others were more concerned at a societal level; how data can be used to improve healthcare for all, or the perceived risk of data sharing with 3rd party organisations.
We also uncovered some broad trends, such as:
- those with higher confidence online tend to be more comfortable with the use of data in health and social care
- those with higher levels of trust in the NHS tend to be more comfortable with the NHS using their patient data
We hope these results will be useful to colleagues working across the health and social care sector. It is important to build public trust and confidence in how we use their health and care data, through policies and programmes and also through communications and engagement. We are happy to talk to any colleagues in the sector about how they might use these findings - you can contact [email protected] if you would like a further discussion.
Last edited: 11 April 2024 1:33 pm