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Know whose data is on the page.

Healthcare organisations receive access requests for health records, employment files and complaint correspondence, often mixed together and often including handwritten notes, scanned letters and references to family members and clinicians. Redactics structures that material by person so that the clinical and information governance judgements can be made with the evidence in front of the reviewer.

What your team is asked

  • Which parts of this record relate to the patient, and which to relatives, carers or other patients?
  • Where is the handwritten and scanned material, and has it been read?
  • Which clinician opinions are in scope, and which need the serious harm consideration?
  • Can we show the Caldicott Guardian and the ICO how the decision was made?

How the case runs

  1. 1

    Collect across systems

    Bring in exports from clinical, HR, complaints and email systems into one case, with a log of what was searched.

  2. 2

    Make scans and handwriting searchable

    Correspondence, referral letters and ward notes become searchable text, with uncertain passages verified against the original.

  3. 3

    Resolve people and roles

    The patient, relatives, carers, clinicians and staff are resolved as distinct people with roles, so third-party material is obvious.

  4. 4

    Review with clinical input

    Findings that may need a clinician's serious harm consideration are queued for them, with the source and context.

SAR-2026-0417/Verify transcription

Original scan, page 1

Letter, 14 Mar 2023. Handwritten margin note.

Transcription

SpoketoDanre:shiftpattern,agreedTues/ThursfromApril.Reviewin6wks.

3 words below the 70% threshold. Page confidence 84%.

"Tues/Thurs" and "April" confirmed. "6 wks" corrected from "b wks".

R. Mensah, 20 Aug 2026, 11:15

From the guided sample case. All data is synthetic.

What changes

Third-party material found, not stumbled on
References to relatives, other patients and staff are grouped and surfaced for decision.
Clinician time used for judgement
Clinicians see the specific passages that need their view, not the whole file.
A record for the Caldicott Guardian
Every decision has a reviewer, a reason and a source, available on request.

What a pilot looks like

  • Choose a closed, representative request, such as an employee SAR or a complaint-related access request
  • Process it in your own tenant in a UK Azure region
  • Compare the resolved people, findings and decisions with the original handling
  • Receive a pilot report suitable for your information governance group
Run a SAR pilot

Relevant controls

  • UK Azure regions
  • Data Security and Protection Toolkit alignment on request
  • DPIA support and template
  • Retention aligned to the NHS Records Management Code
Security and trust

Make SARs manageable.

Try Redactics yourself or talk to us about your current process.