NDG report on barriers to information sharing to support direct care

The findings from this report are used to develop an education and training strategy to encourage information sharing for individual care. The key elements of this approach should include the following dimensions:

• Accessible and authoritative sector-wide guidance
• Clear, consistent and accessible use of language
• Measures to promote a culture of safe sharing to support personal care
• Exemplars of good practice
• Consistency with new models of care and emerging technology challenges

There needs to be clarity about what falls within direct care and what does not. Any new guidance needs to use clear language and be consistent with a changing health and care landscape.

An approach should be developed to ensure patients, carers and service users can access important information about their health and care in ways that help them understand the content and context of that information.

A better understanding should be developed of what specific data and information is required by the health and care system to meet the different demands of care provision, research and planning. This should be combined with an increased focus on data quality, structure and access hierarchies. This would enable the relevant data (and only the relevant data) to be accessed by the appropriate teams and the appropriate points, without the issues that could be caused by the sharing of the entire patient record.