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Dame Fiona Caldicott, DBE, M.A., BM, B.Ch, Hon. MD, Hon. DSc., FRCPsych, FRCP, FRCPI, FRCGP, FAMS, is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. She has been Principal of Somerville College, Oxford since 1996.

She is a Pro-Vice Chancellor of the university and chairs its Personnel and Student Health committees and the Joint Committee with Student Members. She is also Chair of the Conference of Colleges. She is a non-executive director of the John Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust and President of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

A review was commissioned by the Chief Medical Officer of England and Wales owing to increasing concern about the ways in which patient information is used in the NHS of England and Wales and the need to ensure that confidentiality is not undermined. Such concern was largely due to the development of information technology in the service, and its capacity to disseminate information about patients rapidly and extensively.

In 1996 guidance on "the protection and use of patient information" was promulgated and there was a need to promote awareness of it at all levels in the NHS. It did not affect Scotland originally but they have recently adopted it. A main committee was set up under Fiona Caldicott's Chair and there were four separate working groups; the committee was known as the Caldicott Committee.

The Caldicott Committee ... was [responsible] to review all patient-identifiable information, which passes from NHS organisations to other NHS or non-NHS bodies for purposes other than direct care, medical research, or where there is a statutory requirement for information. The committee was to consider each flow of patient-identifiable information and was to advise the NHS Executive whether patient identification was justified by the purpose and whether action to minimise risks of breach of confidentiality was desirable—for example, reduction, elimination, or separate storage of items of information.

The Caldicott Report was published in December 1997.

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