The Personal Demographics Service
The Personal Demographics Service (PDS) is an essential element of the NHS Care Records Service (NHS CRS) which will underpin the creation of an electronic care record for every registered NHS patient in England by 2010.
Each person's care record will be comprised of both demographic information, such as name, address, date of birth and NHS Number, and medical information.
How it works
The PDS is the national electronic database of NHS patient demographic details. It will enable a patient to be readily identified by healthcare professionals and associated, quickly and accurately, with their correct medical details.
- The PDS will not hold any clinical or sensitive data items such as ethnicity or religion. The PDS is a component part of the Spine.
- The Spine is the name given to the national databases of key information about patients' health and care. It forms the core of the NHS CRS.
- The Spine also supports other key programme of the National Programme for IT, such as Choose and Book and the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS), each of them using the Spine's messaging capabilities as part of their own services.
- As well as the PDS, the Spine will have a number of applications including: Personal Spine Information Service, Clinical Spine Application, Secondary Uses Service, Transaction Messaging System and the Access Control Framework.
- Information on the PDS is held nationally and accessed by authorised healthcare professionals through their organisation's local system.
