The staff at Western Vale Family Practice record information about you and your health so that you can receive the right care and treatment. We need to record this information, together with the details of the care you receive, so that it is available each time we see you.

The information recorded about you may also be used for reasons other than your personal care, for example, to help to protect the health of the general public, to plan for the future, to train staff and to carry out medical and other health research or studies.

Thus, we are involved in a Health Observatory based on anonymised patient information. The reasonable security measures and anonymisation processes are in place to comply with the relevant data protection regulations. If you would like to opt out of this data collection scheme, please let your doctor know and your records will not be collected for use for this Observatory. This will not affect your care in any way.

If anything to do with the Observatory or derivative research would require that you provide additional information about yourself, you will be contacted by your GP to see if you are willing to take part: you will not be identified in any published results.

You have a right of access to your health records. If at any time you would like to know more, or have any concerns about how we use your information, please ask reception for more details.

A list of published research using the THIN (The Health Improvement Network) database is available upon request. Please contact them on 020 7501 7540 or email mailto:info@the-health-improvement-network.co.uk for a copy.

Opt Out

If you would like to opt out of this data collection scheme, please let the Practice know and no data from your records will be collected or used in research.  This will not affect your care in any way.

If anything to do with the research would require that you provide additional information about yourself, you will be contacted to see if you are willing to take part;  you will not be identified in any published results.