Website of the Department of Health

Overview of the policy position

People are overwhelmed by the amount of information they are faced with. We are inundated daily with information in many forms. Print, radio, television, the internet - all flood our lives with information.

We know from the report "Assessing the quality of information to support people in making decisions about their health and healthcare” (commissioned by the Department of Health from the Picker Institute in 2006) 80% of patients actively seek information about how to cope with health problems. What we also know from this report is that the information available to them varies greatly in terms of quality, accessibility and availability. This is reinforced by market and end-user research conducted in 2007 by the Central Office of Information.

For almost a decade, there has been a demonstrable commitment from Government to providing people with the information they need. In response to the exponential increase in information a number of information services have been developed, including NHS Direct, PALS and more recently NHS Choices. These and a number of other initiatives from the private and commercial sectors, such as the Centre for Health Information Quality, have contributed to the current project.