Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to enhance digital interoperability between NHS services.

Digital interoperability between National Health Services will be supported through the use of information standards, published under section 250 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. This has been amended by the Health and Care Act 2022, and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, to make new information standards mandatory, including for regulated providers of health and adult social care, and including private providers, and their suppliers of IT services.

Information standards set the requirements, including data structure, that must be followed when health and adult social care information is used, shared, or otherwise processed, allowing for information to flow between organisations that use different systems, in real time. NHS England is introducing mandatory information standards in a staged process.