Strict and robust safeguards are in place to protect the security and confidentiality of every patient's health care record, including the demographics information stored in the Personal Demographics Service (PDS).

These include:

• The use of 'smart cards' with a Personal Identification Number (PIN). These will be individually issued by the local Registration Authority to staff that will be using the NHS Care Records Service, following training.
• The level of access to records will be determined by the role the staff member has with the patient – for example, a consultant will see more detail than a receptionist who will only see the information needed to process an appointment, not the full clinical record (role-based access).
• NHS Care Records will only be accessible in an identifiable form to authorised health care professionals who have a justifiable clinical or legal reason to see the information. For NHS research and management purposes, the data may be used in an anonymised format.
• There will be a log kept of those who use the NHS Care Records Service to access a care record, showing who they are and what they added or changed. The patient can ask to see this information.
• The PDS will not itself hold any clinical information or sensitive data items such as ethnicity or religion.

Patients cannot routinely request that their data is not stored on the Personal Demographic Service (PDS) as it is necessary for some information to be held about everyone who is a patient of the NHS.

In particular, contact details must be held to:

• satisfy legal requirements for registers of which patients are under the care of each GP Practice.
• ensure that each individual presenting for care is ordinarily resident in this country and therefore eligible for free care.
• ensure that information about one patient does not become confused with that of another patient.
• Contact patients when they need to attend check-ups etc.

There are cases where access to a patient's demographics record must be limited, for example for an adoption. These are managed by the National Back Office using well-established links with other agencies.