Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure full interoperability between NHS IT systems.

The Health and Social Care Act 2022, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 and the Health and Social Care Information Standards (Procedure) Regulations 2025, establish a new legislative framework for setting mandatory information standards for public and private health and adult social care providers and IT suppliers in the health and care system. This will provide the basis for ensuring interoperability between IT systems.

Mandatory information standards will be introduced in a staged process, allowing for different systems to communicate and share data more effectively.