Keep your data safe

Practice owners have some important data protection obligations to follow or their business could be at risk. Chris Alderson and Puja Solanki explain.

If you handle and process personal information about individ­uals, you have a legal obligation under the Data Protection Act 1998 to protect that information.

The Act requires that those who record, use and process personal information must be open about how that information is used and must also follow the eight principles of ‘good information handling’, which govern how data can be used. These apply to all private practices.