Practical Commissioning's Jargon Buster explains the meaning of the term 'Pseudonomynisation'.
This relates to the Summary Care Record, the medical information kept about any individual patient on the national database.
For management and clinical purposes other than direct patient care, individual names are stripped out and allocated a pseudonym (a false name). Secondary uses – those that do not involve direct patient care – working with pseudonyms include statistical analysis, audit, commissioning, finance, planning and benchmarking. The use of pseudonyms is intended to be more robust than merely making records anonymous, as information cannot be tracked back to the individual patient.
