The Information Standards Board for Health and Social Care in England (ISB) is tasked with the independent approval, assurance and governance of information standards for adoption by the NHS and Adult Social Care. The scope of ISB includes all information standards within the DH, NHS and Adult Social Care. This scope extends to those required to support approved sharing and communication with other agencies where NHS infrastructure and systems are used.

The ISB:

• Ensures that information standards are fit for purpose, can be implemented, support the exchange of information between systems, such that sending and receiving people derive the same meanings, and reduce clinical risk, while ensuring stability or improvements in patient safety.
• Reviews DH, NHS and Social Care information standards to ensure that they are still appropriate and consistent (including those approved by its predecessor, CRIR - the Committee for Regulation of Information Requirements).
• Identifies the need for future standards and, where necessary, the development of additions or subtractions to existing DH, NHS and Social Care standards. This may include producing a case for change.
• Provides input into policy implications for information standards and into informatics policy itself to ensure it can be delivered by the informatics community, ie ISB will express the burden that policy decisions may have to support the decision making process.
• Undertakes from time to time a review of the scope of the ISB remit in the light of changes to service delivery, eg the establishment of care trusts.

The ISB has a dedicated team to support all the above, referred to as the Information Standards Management Service (ISMS).