All of our patients receive the highest quality of care. This is never affected by the choices you make about sharing your information for research and planning.

At ieso, we know that therapy can be highly effective, but currently clinicians are unable to reliably predict which therapies are most likely to work for particular people. This means that those seeking help for a mental health condition can face a lengthy process of trial-and-error before they find the right treatment, or combination of treatments, for them.

To understand how to make therapy more effective for more people, we need to learn how patients’ treatment outcomes (including their mental health measures, functional measures, emotional wellbeing, and achievement of personal goals) relate to the therapy they are given.

The answers lie in health and care data; the key to unlocking them is research.

Our scientists have developed tools that use machine learning to automatically label every element of therapy given to each patient. This means we can measure how much of each therapy session is spent on different activities, such as understanding a patient’s needs, delivering different therapy protocols, evaluating progress, and setting and reviewing between-session homework tasks.

We hold these therapy data in a secure research library, along with additional information about our patients’ health and care (e.g., progress measures and treatment outcomes) and their socio-demographic data. We remove personal information that could be used to directly identify patients from the research library, so our researchers will never know who the data is about.
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What choice do I have over my personal data?

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All of our patients receive the highest quality of care. This is never affected by the choices a patient makes about sharing their health and care data for research, or taking part in a research study or clinical trial.

To protect our patients’ safety, wellbeing and freedom of choice, we comply with (1) UK data privacy laws, policies and regulations (2) international standards on data security (e.g., ISO 27001), and (3) Good Research and Clinical Practice guidelines.  

However, we understand that not everyone wants their data to be used for purposes beyond their direct care. Therefore, for use of your data beyond your direct care, you’re able to opt out of sharing your confidential information – either by:

1. Opting out via the National Data Optout, which applies to the NHS and all their partners (including ieso).
2. Opting out via ieso directly, which won’t affect how the NHS uses your data.

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Opt out with ieso directly

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We recognise that you might prefer to remove your consent for ieso to use your information for research and planning purposes but continue to allow the NHS and their other partners to use your information for research and planning purposes.

You can make this decision very simply by emailing mydataresearch@iesohealth.com with your name and the email address you used to register for our service. If you no longer use the email address, we will need extra information to retrieve your case record – this information may include your full name, DOB and address.

This choice applies to all UK patients.

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Opt out via the National Data Opt-out

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ieso is a Business Partner to the NHS, providing services to the NHS in areas where they are commissioned, working to improve care for patients and the public.

Whenever you use a health or care service, such as attending Accident & Emergency or using Community Care services, important information about you is collected in a patient record for that service. Collecting this information helps to ensure you get the best possible care and treatment.

The information collected about you when you use these services can also be used and provided to other organisations for purposes beyond your individual care, for instance to help with:

• improving the quality and standards of care provided
• research into the development of new treatments
• preventing illness and diseases
• monitoring safety
• planning services

This may only take place when there is a clear legal basis to use this information. All these uses help to provide better health and care for you, your family and future generations. Confidential patient information about your health and care is only used like this where allowed bylaw.

Most of the time, anonymised data is used for research and planning so that you cannot be identified in which case your confidential patient information isn’t needed.

You have a choice about whether you want your confidential patient information to be used in this way. If you are happy with this use of information you do not need to do anything. If you do choose to opt out your confidential patient information will still be used to support your individual care.

To find out more or to register your choice to opt out, please visit www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters. On this web page you will:

• See what is meant by confidential patient information
• Find examples of when confidential patient information is used for individual care and examples of when it is used for purposes beyond individual care
• Find out more about the benefits of sharing data
• Understand more about who uses the data
• Find out how your data is protected
• Be able to access the system to view, set or change your opt-out setting
• Find the contact telephone number if you want to know any more or to set/change your opt-out by phone
• See the situations where the opt-out will not apply

You can also find out more about how patient information is used at:

https://www.hra.nhs.uk/information-about-patients/ (which covers health and care research); and https://understandingpatientdata.org.uk/what-you-need-know (which covers how and why patient information is used, the safeguards and how decisions are made).

You can change your mind about your choice at any time.

Data being used or shared for purposes beyond individual care does not include your data being shared with insurance companies or used for marketing purposes and data would only be used in this way with your specific agreement.

Our organisation is compliant with the national data opt-out policy.