Unlocking the Power of a Single Patient Record: Driving Safer, Smarter, More Connected Care

Public understanding of how health data is managed is low. Research shows that 61% of people believe a single, national patient record already exists, and 57% do not recall being informed about the data held in their GP record. In reality, patient information is siloed across hundreds of disconnected systems, creating duplication, delays, and risk. 

The NHS plans to change this through the Single Patient Record (SPR) – a digital record that combines information from all healthcare providers into one secure and accessible view. In doing so, the SPR promises to improve patient safety, reduce inefficiencies, and enable smarter, more connected care.

But how will this vision be delivered in practice?

In a session sponsored by Quantexa, a panel of industry experts explored what it will take to make the SPR a reality and the challenges the NHS must overcome to get there.

The discussion began with Ayub Bhayat, Director of Data Services and Deputy Chief Data & Analytics Officer at NHS England, who outlined the purpose and direction of the SPR. He explained that the programme forms part of national digital reform, aligned to the NHS Long Term Plan and the government’s data strategy, both of which aim to move care “from hospital to community” and “from analogue to digital.”

Ayub stressed that the SPR is not simply a technology project but a fundamental shift in how care is delivered. “The tech and data matter… but the bigger element is how we deliver the transformation that changes models of care – how patients flow between hospitals, communities, and self-care.”

Over one-third of all NHS interactions will soon be digital, and the SPR must support this shift by providing a single, secure version of patient information across all care settings. This will ensure patients and clinicians have access to accurate, up-to-date information whenever and wherever it is needed.

Public appetite for the change is strong, with research showing 80% of people want a national record in place. “We want to transform care and make the SPR the digital backbone of what we’re trying to achieve,” he added, “and make sure we don’t exclude anybody along that journey.”

The SPR is currently in a “test and learn” phase, following an initial market engagement exercise that received more than 90 responses from suppliers. Work is now underway with patients, clinicians, and partners to shape what will provide the most value in practice.

Three proofs of concept are being tested: a shared care record approach with agreed governance, an integration model to understand how local and national systems will connect, and a virtual data layer to enable secure access to information without centralising all data in one place.

Ayub emphasised that progress will only be meaningful if it is shaped by those who will use it. As he put it, “we’ll continue to work with patients, user groups, and colleagues from across the system to make sure we create the best possible solution.”

With the foundations of the programme set out, the conversation moved to the panel. Rachel Dunscombe, CEO of openEHR International, opened by asking: “What do people actually need from the SPR for it to deliver real value in care?”

Dominique Allwood, CEO of Imperial College Health Partners, began by describing how the absence of shared information often leads to disjointed care. She gave the example of using Pharmacy First, where the pharmacist treated her but asked for details already held elsewhere in the system: “She asked for my NHS number, my medical history, my allergies… At the end, I asked if the consultation would go back to my GP. She wasn’t sure.”

She also highlighted the professional impact of fragmented records while working on a child health hub model. “If you need a health visitor, a social worker, and a GP to work together as a team, at the moment they can’t see that single version of the truth.”

Together, these examples illustrate how a unified record could support safer, faster, and more coordinated care. But while the ambition behind the SPR is clear, the real work lies in culture change rather than technology. “Just as uploading documents to a shared drive doesn’t make a team work well together, access to shared data won’t drive change unless new ways of working are embedded around it.”

Another challenge is clarity of purpose. Pritesh Mistry, Fellow in Digital Technologies at The King’s Fund, argued that before debating architecture, the NHS must first define what the SPR actually is. “Does it hold care data? Community data? Does it hold data about the individual, about their circumstances and situations?”

He noted that wider factors such as digital exclusion, care responsibilities, and housing are referenced in NHS policy, suggesting the SPR must go beyond clinical information alone. For Pritesh, progress must focus on delivery over ambition: agreeing on minimum requirements first and building simple, usable data infrastructure rather than chasing theoretical perfection.

Joe Zhang, Head of Data Science at the AI Centre for Value-Based Healthcare, pushed this point further, acknowledging that the ambition is not new. The NHS has attempted interoperability before through programmes like shared care records and national data standards. “We have done a lot of the groundwork,” he added, but the challenge now is going from vision to a product in a way that works.

Rather than starting from scratch, Joe urged the NHS to build on existing infrastructure. He also cautioned against underestimating data complexity: “Up to 90% of health data is in unstructured text [spread across] more than a hundred siloed systems.” That makes it difficult to access the full patient story. He also flagged the importance of preparing for future data types too: “What is the plan for data horizons… How is genomics going to be integrated into this?”

The conversation then turned to Ram Rajaraman, Healthcare and Life Sciences Industry Lead at Quantexa – a British scale-up that specialises in contextualising complex, siloed data, helping organisations build a richer, more connected view of citizens and services.

Asked how the SPR could create value at a citizen level, he reframed the challenge: “The question is, how do you make the SPR a trusted, contextual, open standards–aligned data foundation?”

Simply pooling medical data would not be enough. The SPR must link information across health, social care, and wider determinants of health if it is to support better decision-making. “Context is essential,” he said, giving an example from safeguarding: a child missing school may not trigger a response alone, but when connected to other risk indicators, it becomes a vital early warning. With connected data, he said, multi-agency teams could intervene sooner and prevent harm. That is the kind of real-world impact a well-designed SPR should enable.

Ram also emphasised the importance of open data standards to ensure long-term interoperability. Rather than choosing between FHIR or openEHR, he said the NHS must understand how different standards work together to preserve clinical meaning and support analytics.

This raised the question of how a national SPR would work alongside existing infrastructure. Ayub made clear that the SPR would not replace local systems but instead connect and enhance them. The priority is to ensure that “national tools connect with local software,” so data can flow securely and consistently across settings. Integration will take time, he said, and must build on what already works across the NHS rather than starting again.

But technical integration alone will not be enough. Across the panel, there was agreement that trust must be engineered into the SPR from the outset. Ram called trust a design principle, built on transparency about how records are linked and who can access them.

Dominique added that people must feel ownership of their data, noting that while some services, like maternity, already enable this, the approach is not yet system-wide. With technologies now able to capture near-verbatim consultation data, she warned that public consent and clarity on use are non-negotiable.

Ayub agreed, calling for a clear social contract with the public so people can see how their data supports both care and research.

Attention then shifted to how the SPR may evolve in the coming years. Joe argued that one of the biggest opportunities lies in accelerating clinical research. The UK currently struggles to recruit for clinical trials, but a national SPR could help identify participants faster and match them to suitable studies. Done well, he said, it could create a fairer, more inclusive research ecosystem and bring new treatments to patients sooner.

Pritesh expanded on this point, warning that innovation would only progress if trust exists inside the system as well as outside it. “We talk a lot about public trust, but we don’t often talk about trust between professions.” For the SPR to support research, prevention, and personalised care, clinicians must have confidence in how data flows between teams. That trust, he said, will depend on transparency, data quality, and professional accountability.

As the session drew to a close, Rachel posed one final question to the panel: “If we’re sat here again in three years’ time, where do you hope we’ll be?”

Ayub said he hoped the SPR would be embedded in everyday practice. “Ubiquitous, accessible… not yet another system,” but something clinicians and patients use because it genuinely improves care.

Dominique shared a similar view. “I’m going to be cautiously optimistic,” she said, acknowledging the fantastic potential of the SPR to shift the NHS towards more proactive and preventative care. But she reiterated that technology alone would not deliver that future without the cultural change she had emphasised earlier.

Pritesh said success should be measured by meaningful, tangible progress rather than ambition alone. In three years, he hoped to see “an established minimum viable product that works for an established demographic,” with a clear path to scaling for wider populations. But like others, he stressed that transformation must be iterative: “Technology continues to change and we are all on the journey, continuing to review and improve as we go.”

Joe agreed, adding that progress must focus on solving real operational bottlenecks rather than chasing perfection. For him, success would mean that a patient or a clinician, at any point or location, can access the essential records they need.

Finally, Ram said he hoped to see the SPR tested and proven in real clinical pathways rather than as a technical concept. He called for “a pathway-first approach,” suggesting that each region should have at least two multi-agency pathways operating at scale. Success, he said, will depend on whether clinicians trust the outcomes in the data driving those pathways.

While each speaker recognised the scale of the challenge ahead, there was a shared confidence that progress is both possible and necessary.

This panel was one of many conversations at HETT 2025 that tackled the realities of digital transformation in health and care, exploring not just what the future should look like, but how to get there responsibly.

Don't miss our brand new event, HETT Leaders' Summit, taking place on 12th February at Royal Armouries, Leeds.