Health Data Epidemiology Group Privacy Policy
What is this information?
Information about mortality and hospital activity is supplied by NHS England and contains data collected when someone is admitted to a hospital bed or dies in England. The Health Data Epidemiology Unit (HDEG) has a Data Access Agreement with NHS England and data is supplied in accordance with section 261 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and the lawful bases for processing the data are GDPR articles 6 (1) (e) (Task in the public interest) and 9 (2) (j) (Processing sensitive data – historical, statistical or scientific purposes).
Data supplied are pseudonymised, a process by which information within a data record that may identify an individual are replaced by artificial identifiers, or pseudonyms which means that individuals are no longer identifiable. Information held includes age, sex, method of admission and discharge, source of admission and discharge, diagnosis codes, procedure and investigation codes, area of residence, hospital attended, date of attendance, and GP practice of patient, and is held from 1989 onwards. More information on this dataset can be found here: http://content.digital.nhs.uk/hes.
Information about mortality is also received separately from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and contains data collected when someone dies in England. This data contains identifiable information supplied under section 42(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act (SRSA) 2007, and it is not possible to link this data to any other data held by UHCE. Information held includes age, sex, cause of death diagnosis codes, area of residence, date of death and date of registration of death, and is held from 1975 onwards.
Who uses this information?
Members and affiliates of the Health Data Epidemiology Group. The Data Controller is the University of Oxford.
What do we do with this information?
This information is used for the purposes of statistical analysis, the monitoring of population health in the county, and to inform the planning and commissioning (buying) of health services. No person-identifiable information is published, and numbers and rates in published reports based on counts fewer than five are removed to further protect confidentiality and anonymity. No automated decision making is carried out on this data.
Why do we use this information?
This information is used to produce analyses of inequalities (e.g. between different areas or over time) of healthcare and conditions, and the natural history of conditions for presentation at conferences and publication in peer-reviewed journals.
Who do we intend to share this information with?
This data will not be disclosed to anyone other than those stated above without permission, unless we have a legal reason to do so, for example for crime prevention or detection purposes.
How do we keep this information secure?
Information is held in a secure database which is only accessible to analytical staff within the Health Data Epidemiology Group. The database is on a secure, encrypted internal network and can only be accessed within this network.
Data will be held for deaths registered from 1975 onwards consistent with the data access agreement between NHS England, the Office for National Statistics and HDEG.
How long will we keep this data?
We will only retain this data for as long as we need it to fulfil our purposes as described above.
What are your rights?
Full details on your rights to access and modify your personal data are available at www1.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/compliance/gdpr/individualrights/.
If you have any queries or concerns about how HDEG uses this data, you may contact the University’s Data Protection Officer at data.protection@admin.ox.ac.uk.
If you are not satisfied, or have any more general queries or concerns about the use of your personal data, the Information Commissioners Office is an independent body set up to uphold information rights in the UK. They can be contacted through their website: www.ico.org.uk, through their helpline (0303 123 1113) and in writing at their head office: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF