About the Health and Care IG Panel

The Health and Care Information Governance Panel brings strategic (information governance) IG policymaking and advice into one place. By doing this we believe we can provide clearer and more consistent advice to patients/service users, health and care staff and IG specialists. 

The panel has a critical role in terms of informing the priorities for new guidance, developing strategy and policy to inform the content, signing off and endorsing guidance to then be published on a shared one-stop shop portal hosted by NHS England's Transformation Directorate.  

A small working group supports the panel in meeting these objectives. It is formed of representatives from each of the panel members’ organisations together with the chair of the Strategic Information Governance Network. The working group signs off shorter and simpler pieces of guidance on behalf of the panel to ensure that it is published in a timely way. Any longer or more complex pieces of guidance are considered by the panel itself once the working group has approved them. 

Before any guidance is considered by the working group or panel, it goes through an informal check and challenge process. A small number of national stakeholders, local IG professionals and patients provide comments.

Engagement is critical so before reaching these sign off stages, we consider carefully the engagement required tailored to each piece of guidance. Some more complex pieces of guidance, for example require a separate dedicated working group of stakeholders to consider the key issues and challenges which then informs the drafting process. The panel considers the engagement which has taken place prior to approving any guidance for publication.  

A banner across the top of the guidance will give you assurance that the guidance has been through this process.