Most of public think that NHS ‘single patient record’ already exists

Most of the public think that a single patient record (SPR) already exists, according to research commissioned by Understanding Patient Data.

Plans for an SPR, summarising patient health information, test results, and letters through the NHS App, were announced by Wes Streeting, health secretary, in October 2024 and are expected to be central to the forthcoming 10 year health plan.

However, a survey of 1,004 people on GP record data, published by Understanding Patient Data in May 2025, found that 61% of the public believe that an SPR already exists.

Anna Steere, head of Understanding Patient Data, said: “As the NHS moves towards a single patient record, it’s essential that people understand what this means for them and their data.”

She added that national bodies need to work with GP practices “to ensure that people get clear accurate explanations that build confidence in how their data is being managed”.

Digital Health News exclusively revealed in February 2025 that the SPR will be available to researchers by default, as well as to providers, patients, policymakers and researchers.

Previous initiatives such as the 2002 National Programme for IT, which attempted to implement a top-down digitisation of the NHS, have notoriously flopped.

In 2021, a GP data sharing scheme, intended to make the medical histories of 55 million patients available to third parties for research, was dropped after 1.5 million people opted out.

A 2013 plan to put GP records in a central database under the Care.Data programme was also abandoned in 2016 after confidentiality complaints.

Steve Wightman, managing director at Access HSC, said: “The overall aspiration to tackle the challenges of disparate data sets across care settings and achieve a single version of the truth for health and care organisations has long been recognised as mission-critical.

“However, does this require a single patient record? Possibly, but only if it scales and builds on the existing tech estate and the successes to date of shared care records.

“Plans need to focus less on the technicalities of delivering a single digital record and more on asking ourselves what challenges we’re trying to solve and how it will integrate not just data, but also people and processes.

“Plus, I think we all hope lessons are learned from previous attempts at delivering a national patient record and this government doesn’t make the same mistakes as those of the past.”

NHS England launched a pre-market engagement on proposals for the SPR in May 2025, asking providers to make suggestions about designing infrastructure for the record.

A request for information document for suppliers, seen by Digital Health News, says that the SPR will “better coordinate care between providers, make discharge summaries electronic, build neighbourhood health systems and run national vaccination and other direct care programmes”.

Commenting on the plans, Kate Bryan, chief transformation officer at Stalis, said that SPR “signals an exciting new chapter in the NHS”.

“Grasping the nettle and delivering a plan that enables healthcare professionals to finally access and share information irrespective of care boundaries, technology, and infrastructure has been needed for a long time,” she added.