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Spinal Injuries: Databases

Asked by Laura Kyrke-SmithLabourDepartment of Health and Social CareTabled Answered 16 July 2025UIN 66481

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing access to the national spinal cord injury database to (a) charities and (b) other stakeholders.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock

The effectiveness of the National Spinal Cord Injury Database (NSCID) is kept under review and is subject to small incremental improvements to reflect changes to spinal cord injury services, and to maintain compliance with legislation. NHS England has been working with spinal cord injury charities to provide them with data within the parameters of information governance, UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data security, and data protection legislation, and data sharing agreements are in place.

Plans to enable patients to connect with charities are in development, which will require working in close collaboration with clinicians who will discuss the option of connecting the patient with a charity at the appropriate moment in their treatment pathway. NHS England has processes in place which enable stakeholders to request access to data held in the NSCID. These processes are compliant with existing information governance, UK GDPR, data protection, and data security legislation and policies. Each request for access to data is assessed in accordance with legislation and accompanying policies.

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