The information recorded about you may be used for reasons other than your personal care, for example, to help protect the health of the general public, to plan for future, to train staff and to carry out medical and other health research. We are involved in research studies which require access to anonymous information (name, address, postcode, full date of birth) are removed. Individual patient’s records are added into a much larger anonymous database from many patients across the UK which is used by researchers outside the practice. This data may be anonymously linked to other data, such as hospital data. If you would like to opt out of this data collection scheme, please let your doctor know and your records will not be collected for use in the anonymous research database. This will not affect your care in any way. If anything to do with the research would require that you provide additional information about yourself, you will be contacted by your GP to see if you are willing to take part; you will not be identified in any published results. If you would like to know more about the data collection scheme, you can speak to the Practice Manager.