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 help ensure the timely sharing of patient information between hospital trusts with different IT systems.

The Health and Social Care Act 2022, the Data (Use and Access) Act, and the Health and Social Care Information Standards (Procedure) Regulations 2025 introduced a new legislative framework for 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.

The Government's 10-Year Health Plan commits to delivering a single patient record (SPR). The SPR will give staff and providers access to the information they need to provide health and care and will end the need for patients to repeat their medical history when interacting with different health and care providers. It will provide a comprehensive patient record, bringing together information from all of a patient’s medical records into one place.

We have been engaging with the public to help shape our plans, including what information they would like to see included in an SPR, and we will continue to talk to the public and to health and care professionals as we design the SPR to ensure their needs are reflected. The SPR will begin to go live from 2028.