Computerised routinely collected primary care data: essential for patient access to records, quality improvement and research.

Computerised primary care data are essential for patient access to records, quality improvement and research. Whilst patients can request paper copies of their records and audit of quality is possible on paper – providing larger numbers of people convenient access to their records and monitoring quality on a national scale requires computerisation of routinely collected primary care data. So much of what we know, and what defines our discipline of, comes from the study of routinely collected clinical data; enabling patient access and systematic monitoring of quality should further improve record quality. However, there is controversy about how these data should be accessed for research – especially whether we need to get permission from individual patients to access records to see if they are eligible for a particular study. The potential need to request permission to look at records to assess suitability for recruitment into a study has come to be called ‘consent for consent’; an issue much debated within the pages of this journal. Records can clearly be accessed with consent; but when consent is not available methods are needed to search and flag people who are eligible for a particular research studywithout anyone outside their practice knowing the patient’s identity.