To ask the Minister of Health when regulations will be brought before the Assembly to implement the Health and Social Care (Control of Data Processing) Act (Northern Ireland) 2016.

The Department places great importance on the completion of work on regulations governing the Secondary Use of Patient Identifiable Information. However, as you will appreciate, for the past 10 months departmental resources have been reallocated to support the Department’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

I can confirm that the complex work to develop regulations for consideration by the Health Committee and the full Assembly has restarted. My officials intend to include discussion on Secondary use of Patient Identifiable Information within the planned public engagement on a “Data Strategy for the use of Health and Social Care information”. The initial phase of this work will be a consultation with key stakeholders.

Draft regulations will be brought to the Assembly for formal consideration once consultations have concluded. Unfortunately such public facing work is challenging in the current circumstances.