• Information about allergies
• Treatments received or ongoing
• Your medicines
• Any reactions to medications in the past
• Any known long-term conditions, such as diabetes or asthma
• Medical test results such as blood tests, allergy tests and other screenings
• Any clinically relevant lifestyle information, such as smoking, alcohol or weight
• Personal data, such as your age, name and address
• Consultation notes, which your doctor takes during an appointment
• Hospital admission records, including the reason you were admitted to hospital
• Hospital discharge records, which will include the results of treatment and whether any follow-up appointments or care are required
• X-rays
• Photographs and image slides, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computerised tomography (CT) scans

Healthcare professionals need access to this data in order to provide the best and most relevant care for you, based on the most up to date information. In the past, these records were contained in a single physical patient file that had to be moved from care setting to care setting: from your local GP surgery to the hospital where you are undergoing a medical procedure for example.

Advances in technology, particularly the capacity to access information held in a central record from remote locations has enabled great improvements in patient outcomes as a result of health professionals being able to refer to the most up to date patient data when making a diagnosis or determining a treatment course. This fact is recognised by Government, who passed legislation requiring Medical Practices from 2015, to provide Summary Care Records (SCR) for all patients who have not chosen to opt out.

An SCR must contain the following information:

• the medicines you are taking
• your allergies
• bad reactions you may have to certain medicines

It also includes your name, address, date of birth and unique NHS Number which helps to identify you correctly.

An SCR is used in a number of healthcare settings and will provide healthcare professionals with any information they wouldn’t otherwise have. For example, when you’re visiting an urgent care centre or being admitted to a hospital, staff could view your SCR and discover you are on a particular medication or have allergies although You can choose to add any information to your SCR that you think will help improve your care. This can be of particular benefit to patients with detailed and complex health problems. The more information that is available to health professionals, the better placed they are to diagnose and treat conditions. CuraGuard’s real time 24-hour dynamic dashboard service can be made available to health professionals with your consent, giving them immediate information about your vital signs around the clock.

At CuraGuard, we welcome progress in the capability to securely share patient information amongst authorised health professionals and look forward to working with Clinical Commissioning Groups and other health providers wishing to incorporate real time patient data into their patient records.