Privacy Notice: iPad electronic patient record (ePR) App

The iPad ePR App is used by clinical staff at Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) to record their interactions with patients. The information collected is securely shared with relevant healthcare providers to support the patient’s care journey across Yorkshire.

How will my information be used?

In order to provide you with the iPad ePR App and associated services, we need to process some personal information. The lawful basis for the Trust to process your information is for the purpose of providing direct patient care under our public task.

The Personal Data processed includes:

  • Staff User Data: IDs, logins, and activity logs, used for governance and accountability.
  • Patient Data: Clinical record entries such as assessments, notes or observations. All personally identifiable data is processed in line with the Trust’s data protection policies.
  • Automatically generated information: Like most other websites and online services, the App gathers and processes automatically generated information about how you use the App. The information gathered includes:
    • Your IP-address
    • Diagnostic information
    • Usage statistics (time spent in a particular area of the App)

To provide the App-owner (the Trust) with information about the usage of the App we are also collecting the following (anonymous) information:

  • The moment you open the App.
  • The blocks (sections of the App) you have opened inside the App and the amount of time you have spent in this block.
  • Actions such as opening URLs (links), viewing pages etc.
  • The moment you leave the app.

The purpose for which Personal Data is processed within the App is to record actions taken by authenticated clinicians, such as patient observations, interventions, and clinical notes, to support audit, governance and accountability.

The App allows uploads of documents, text, patient signatures, and photographs. These are processed only for direct care, clinical audit, and governance purposes. They are never used for analytics, marketing or tracking.

The App can capture patient and staff signatures:

  • Patients: can provide digital signatures to record refusal or acceptance of care.
  • Staff: can provide signatures during patient handovers.
  • Authentication: optional biometric authentication (e.g. Touch ID) is available on supported devices for staff security.

Clinicians can use the device’s camera to capture images of patient injuries (e.g. lacerations or burns before wound dressing). These may be shared securely with partners and hospitals to support direct care. This enables receiving teams to assess injuries without removing dressings, improving patient experience. Trust staff are reminded to remain mindful of privacy when capturing and sharing images.

Sharing your information

Information collected on the ePR relating to patient care is shared only with relevant partners and healthcare services for the purposes of direct clinical care. Information collected relating to staff is authentication or logon information, which is used to authorise staff to use the App. For further details, please refer to the Privacy Notice – Emergency Ambulance Service (999) and the Privacy Notice - Staff.

Security of your information

The security of your data and that of other users is very important to us. Measures are implemented to secure your personal information, to minimise the risks of damage, loss of information, and unauthorised access or use of information.

All ePR records are stored securely within Trust systems. The development system used to build and maintain the App is hosted in Microsoft Azure (UK South region), with encryption always applied in transit and, where appropriate, at rest.

If the App experiences a fault, anonymised technical diagnostic data is collected to help the developers to troubleshoot any issues. This information is used solely to improve App stability and performance, never for advertising, profiling or user tracking.

How long will you keep hold of my information?

Records are maintained in line with the Trust’s Records Management Policy and retention periods are based on guidance provided in the Records Management Code of Practice for Health and Social Care (NHS Digital).