The newly published Health and Social Care Bill sets out the Government’s proposals for the NHS in draft legislation. Coming in at 367 pages it’s a tough read.

In general it builds upon the original White Paper in giving some concrete details about the new NHS structure. This includes the role of the CQC, NICE, Monitor, NHS Commissioning Board and the Information Centre. It also defines how public health and patient involvement will be managed. This includes the establishment of a ring-fenced public health budget and much greater ownership and involvement by local authorities.

The Bill also sets out that the Department of Health and the NHS Commissioning Board can publish information standards which must be implemented by any public body delivering health and/or adult social care. The Bill itself does not provide much more detail, but its Explanatory Notes define an information standard as a document containing standards that relate to the processing of information. These may be technical standards, data standards or information governance standards.

Technical standards relate to the specification of systems and may, for example, include messaging, system interoperability or security requirements. Data standards define the structure and type of data to be recorded, for example how to record date of birth or a clinical condition. Information governance standards relate to policies, procedures and guidelines on information processing.  Processing has the same meaning as the term has in the Data Protection Act 1998. This is a broad definition that captures a range of activity involving information – obtaining, holding, recording, using, sharing.

The Bill continues the commitment made in the White Paper. Whilst it will undoubtedly be refined through parliament it’s clear that standards will be a key part of informatics in the future.