Sharing

Here you can control what your teams and carers can see in your record.

Finding the sharing page

How do I see who I am sharing my record with?

Click ‘Sharing’ and then click either Professionals or Friends/Family to see who has access to your record.

How do I share my record with a carer?

You can allow carers to access your record to help you manage your health. Click 'Friends/Family' on the Sharing page and then click 'Add carer' and provide their details. Choose which privacy labels you want them to be able to see.

An email will be sent to this person to invite them to register as your carer. The name of the person you invited will sit in ‘Pending invitations’ until they accept. If the carer does not accept you can resend the invitation from the pending tab in the navigation bar.

Once they have accepted your carer will be able to see the information in your record and add to it.

How do I share my record with a professional?

If your healthcare team do not use PKB you can still give individual health care professionals access to your record to help manage your care. Click 'Professionals' on the Sharing page and then click 'Add an individual' and add their details. Choose which privacy labels you want them to be able to see.

Once they have accepted your invitation, the individual professional will be able to see the information in your record and add to it.

How do I revoke access to my record?

Within the Sharing section, click on the 'Professionals' or 'Friends/Family' button to see a list of everyone who you have shared your record with. Click 'Edit' on the team/individual you wish to stop sharing with and then click the button at the top so it turns grey and says ‘Off.’

Both you and the team/individual will receive an email notification that you have stopped sharing your record.

Please note that if you stop sharing with a team, they will still be able to access your record to view data that they added to the record.

How do I start sharing again?

If you decide you want to start sharing your record again with someone you have previously revoked access to then on the 'Sharing' tab, click on 'Past' and then click 'Share again' next to the name of the team/individual with whom you want to re-share with. Complete the form.

The team or individual will receive your new invitation and message. Once they accept your invitation, you will receive an email confirming the acceptance.

I don't want professionals to be able to start sharing my record again. What can I do?

It is possible to disable all sharing of all your data. This means that professionals can never give themselves access to your record other than to see data they themselves have added and that no one except you can see your medical record in PKB. Even breaking the glass is not possible, so the PKB record cannot be used in an emergency.

To disable sharing you must go through a consent process to make sure you understand the medical safety implications of preventing access to your data. You can re-enable sharing at a later date by going through a similar consent process.

What criteria must I meet to disable sharing?

Your record must have a National Identifier, so that your record cannot be recreated by another user.
A Privacy Officer from an organisation with access to your record must explain the implications of disabling sharing to you along with the other ways to stop sharing. It is really important that you fully understand the impact of stopping the sharing of your data because there are implications for clinical safety by stopping record access. Once this is explained to you, you must provide informed consent to disable sharing of your record.

Please note:

Patients under the age of 16 cannot disable sharing because professionals have a legal duty to access the record of a child. This is part of the features of looking after a child's record.
Adult patients who lack mental capacity also cannot disable sharing because they cannot give informed consent. There must be an assessment of the patient's mental capacity before sharing can be disabled.

How do I change my contact preferences & consent?

When you log in for the first time, you may be asked to complete our advanced consent questions. These questions may ask for your contact preferences or if you agree to help with research.

You will see prompts if you have not answered these questions previously for specific teams.

You can change your responses at any time. To do this go to Sharing > Professionals. Click ‘Edit’ next to the team caring for you (if you are cared for by multiple teams you will have to repeat this process for each team). You can also use the prompts/shortcuts from the professionals page.

Scroll down to the Permissions section and amend your answers. Remember to click Save at the bottom of the screen.

If you need further information on what these questions mean, please click here.