Privacy Notice
About this Privacy Notice
This Privacy Notice explains how your data is used as part of the MyCare.scot online service.
We have also provided an easy read privacy notice which is available here.
As well as this notice, you should also read the MyCare.scot terms and conditions and cookies policy.
MyCare.scot and the wider Digital Front Door Programme
MyCare.scot is part of a wider national programme called the Digital Front Door which is being developed by Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland), in partnership with Scottish Government. This privacy notice relates to the use of data for the MyCare.scot service only, for further details of the Digital Front Door Programme please visit this page.
What is MyCare.scot
MyCare.scot is an online service where users can interact more effectively with health and care services. It is a digital platform accessible by adults in Scotland which contains personalised health and care information from services which are scheduled to, or already have, given them care.
MyCare.scot will link in to existing or newly created public sector services in order to provide a single secure route through which users can interact with health and social care services.
MyCare.scot can be accessed in two ways, either by using the web browser-based version (referred to as the “Web App”) or the “Mobile App.” The Web App can be accessed by any device using a web browser whereas the Mobile App must be downloaded from one of the platform stores (eg. Apple’s App Store or Google Play store) onto a mobile device before it can be used. Both these apps work in very similar ways and they connect into the same back-end services. So “MyCare.scot” will be used in this notice to describe both the Web and Mobile Apps, with any specific differences called out in each section.
June 2026 Release: The national release of MyCare.scot will allow users to access details relating to their healthcare using either the Web or Mobile App. In future, further services will be added including aspects relating to social care.
Terms We Use in This Privacy Notice (Glossary)
- Personal Data – is information that relates to a specific living individual.
- Special Category Personal Data – is personal data that needs more protection because it is sensitive. This includes data about your health.
- Processed – data is “processed” when any action is taken with it. For example when it is collected, transferred or deleted.
- Controller – an organisation or person that makes decisions about what, how and why personal data is processed. They are legally responsible for the data.
- Processor – an organisation or person which processes personal data on behalf of a Controller and under specific instruction.
- You can find more information about these terms on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.
- MyCare.scot – is the online service where users can interact with health and care services. It can be accessed in two ways: using a web browser based “Web App” and those using the MyCare.scot “Mobile App”
- Web App – this refers to users accessing MyCare.scot through a web browser
- Mobile App – this refers to users accessing the services through the MyCare.scot mobile app which must be downloaded onto the mobile device before use.
Organisations Involved in MyCare.scot
The organisations involved in MyCare.scot are:
Public Services Delivery Scotland
Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland) is a public organisation within NHS Scotland, and part of our functions are to provide “information services” to support the work of health boards and Scottish Ministers. PSD Scotland are the lead body for digital development within NHS Scotland and have been commissioned by the Scottish Government to develop the MyCare.scot online service.
For the purposes of MyCare.scot, PSD Scotland are acting as a Processor of the personal data, acting on the instructions of the Controllers who are the organisations responsible for your healthcare, namely your regional Health Board. In future social care services from your Local Authority will also be available through MyCare.scot.
PSD Scotland provide many of the support services used by MyCare.scot as part of our National Digital Platform work. PSD Scotland again act as a Processor for these services to health boards. For further details of these services please visit this page.
PSD Scotland also:
- manage the National Contact Centre that provides support to users who are having issues with aspects of MyCare.scot
- provide a virtual waiting room function by using a company called Queue-It so that the systems don’t get overloaded if there is a lot of people trying to access MyCare.scot
For full details around PSD Scotland and the range of work we do, please see the main PSD Scotland Privacy Notice.
Health Boards
There are 14 regional Health Boards in Scotland which are responsible for the protection and the improvement of their population’s health and for the delivery of frontline healthcare services. Your Health Board has responsibility for the healthcare services being provided as part of MyCare.scot. They are the Controller of the healthcare personal data processed within MyCare.scot.
Scottish Government
The ScotAccount service is run by the Scottish Government which provides users a simple way to access multiple public services, by having one account that can link to several services. The Scottish Government also provide the Digital Mailbox service which is a single secure mailbox that can be used by different public sector services.
The Scottish Government are the Controller for the personal data processed in ScotAccount. They are also Controller for the messages that are held in the Digital Mailbox, however the Scottish Government are not able to access the content of the messages, meaning they will not be able to see any information relating to your health and care included in those messages. You will be able to remove messages held in the Digital Mailbox at any time if you no longer wish to store it. Whenever this data is shared with MyCare.scot, the relevant Health Board are Controller for the shared data and PSD Scotland act as Processor.
Local Authorities
In future, MyCare.scot will enable users to view information relating to social care services. Further details will be added here when these services become available.
What types of personal information is collected/used
| Description | Data Items | Details |
|---|---|---|
| ScotAccount Data |
|
Users must create a ScotAccount and then agree to share these details with MyCare.scot. These data items are used in order to identify an individual’s Community Health Index (CHI) number, which is the unique identifying number used in healthcare records. ScotAccount is managed by Scottish Government. |
| Community Health Index (CHI) Database |
|
The CHI Database is a central database that holds the details of all individuals in Scotland registered with a GP practice. The details are originally collected when that individual registers with their GP practice. The CHI Database is managed by Public Services Delivery Scotland. |
| National Digital Platform (NDP) User Store |
|
The NDP User Store holds the link between a user’s ScotAccount identity and their CHI Number and is used for several aspects of MyCare.scot. It is held and managed by Public Services Delivery Scotland. |
| Identity/Access Tokens |
|
Identity/access tokens are time-limited parcels of information which MyCare.scot uses when performing all its functions. They are used to determine what users can access and also when communicating with other systems to provide the right information. This aspect is managed by one of the support services provided by Public Services Delivery Scotland. |
| Vaccination Records |
|
This data is initially collected when you receive a vaccination and is stored in the National Clinical Datastore, managed by Public Services Delivery Scotland. |
| Emergency Care Summary (ECS) Data (Allergies and Medications) |
Allergies
Medications
|
The Emergency Care Summary is a summary of basic information about your health which might be important if you need urgent medical care when your GP is closed, or when you go to an accident and emergency department. This information is copied from your GP’s computer system into a national database, managed by Public Services Delivery Scotland. |
| Appointments Data: In the June 2026 release this is only available for NHS Lanarkshire users with certain dermatology appointments |
Details of the Appointment, including:
|
Your Health Board will create appointments on their local patient administration systems. Some examples of when this happens is when they receive a referral from your GP, after you attended a previous appointment or other situations. This data is then transferred into one of the support services managed by Public Services Delivery Scotland and made available for users to access in MyCare.scot. |
| Digital Communications: In the June 2026 release this is only relates to NHS Lanarkshire users with certain dermatology appointments and is only available to view using the Web App. |
Message Content For example, appointment messages will include all the details relating to that appointment, including the attached appointment letter. |
As part of the wider Digital Front Door Programme, new services have been put in place to enable digital messages to be sent to a secure mailbox; the Digital Mailbox managed by the Scottish Government. Messages created by health and care services will be transferred into this secure mailbox. The Digital Mailbox makes these messages available to be shown within MyCare.scot. |
| Calls to the National Contact Centre |
Depending on the nature of the call, some of the data items that may be captured or sourced from relevant systems are:
|
Each call to the National Contact Centre will be different, and call agents will only ask for details that are needed to help with the particular issue for that user. The National Contact Centre, managed by PSD Scotland, will note the details in their system, provide any support they can and if needed will share details with the relevant areas who can assist the user. This could be technical teams in PSD Scotland or with other organisations involved such as a user’s regional Health Board or GP Practice. |
| Reporting & Analytics - General |
Depending on the specific insights required, other data items will be sourced from available datasets and linked to data used in MyCare.scot in order to provide the reporting outcomes required. |
In order to provide insights to the organisations involved, PSD Scotland will provide reporting and analytics services as directed by the Controllers of the data. This will include aspects such as being able to report how many people for each Health Board have signed up to use MyCare.scot and in future will look at things like sign-in functionality, people’s use of appointments and digital communications and the impact on health and care services in Scotland. |
| Website/Mobile App Analytics |
Plausible Analytics then looks up a visitor’s country, region and city based on the IP Address |
To understand how people are using MyCare.scot (both the Web and Mobile Apps), PSD Scotland use a product called Plausible Analytics. When someone uses MyCare.scot, events about the web or mobile page (including device IP address) will be securely transferred to Plausible Analytics who immediately pseudonymise the data. Individual users are not tracked, and IP addresses are never stored by Plausible Analytics. This data is then anonymised and used and to track overall trends and patterns. |
| Virtual Waiting Room |
|
To ensure that the MyCare.scot service and systems it interacts with are not overloaded, PSD Scotland use a company called Queue-It to provide a virtual waiting room. Queue-It uses essential cookies on your device to manage the queue before you reach MyCare.scot only and does not process any of the data you access in MyCare.scot. PSD Scotland uses Amazon Web Services Cloudfront as a content delivery network in order to link with the Queue-It virtual waiting room. |
| Crash Analytics – Mobile App only |
Other non-personal data items are also sent such as details about the device, the operating system, battery level, connection type and app version. Other details are also sent in relation to error tracking and understanding the app’s use before the error occurred, including what pages were being accessed or calls to other services might have caused the error. |
PSD Scotland contracts a service called Sentry from an organisastion called Functional Software Inc. This helps us understand if users are having performance issues or if parts of the App aren’t working and provides error reporting. It is not used to single out individuals but to understand where there are issues with the technology or software that may need to be addressed. |
| App Attestation – Mobile App only |
Other non-personal data is transferred to verify the device and app authenticity such as details of the app version used |
App attestation is a process that checks that an app is genuine and has not been modified or tampered with and is running on a secure device. PSD Scotland contracts Google Firebase to provide these services to which helps ensure the security of user’s data and the services as a whole. |
Retention Periods
MyCare.scot does not store data long term. Instead, it uses data already stored in other systems and makes that available to users while they are using the online service. When a user stops using MyCare.scot then the data held in MyCare.scot is deleted.
For details around the retention of data in the systems MyCare.scot interacts with:
ScotAccount – for logging into ScotAccount including contact details and digital messages stored in Digital Mailbox.
Health Boards – for retention of healthcare information.
How the NHS handles your personal health information | NHS inform
Queue-It – Queue-It may store the encrypted IP address used to manage the virtual waiting room for up to 12 months.
Sentry – Mobile App Only – IP Address may be stored up to 90 Days
Google FireBase – Mobile App Only – IP Address may be stored up to 30 days
Why We Use Personal Data
The purpose of MyCare.scot is for everyone in Scotland to have a single, secure point of access to their health and social care information – wherever they live, whatever their needs. The aim is to make information clear, consistent and available and enable users to make confident, informed decisions about their care.
Lawful Basis
A user’s regional Health Board is the Controller for the data processed within MyCare.scot.
Under data protection legislation, the lawful bases and condition for processing are:
- For processing of personal data
- UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e) - processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller.
- For processing of special category personal data
- UK GDPR Article 9(2)(h) - processing is necessary for the purposes of the provision of health or social care or treatment or the management of health or social care systems.
- The Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1, Condition 2(2)(f) - the management of health care systems or services or social care systems or services.
The Health Board’s legal gateway is their obligations to provide health and social care services under the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978.
A list of all 14 regional Health Boards can be found here:
Organisations – Scotland's Health on the Web
Who we share personal data with
Digital Communications – Currently NHS Lanarkshire only
The December 2025 release of MyCare.scot allows individuals to access information relating to their healthcare and is part of the wider Digital Front Door Programme. If a user signs up to use MyCare.scot, then any service that sends digital communications will begin sending these digital messages to the user’s Digital Mailbox managed by the Scottish Government. For the December 2025 release, dermatology secondary care services in NHS Lanarkshire are the only service that will send digital messages and the MyCare.scot online service is not involved in this data transfer. NHS Lanarkshire provide the information to PSD Scotland, who reformat it into the correct message format and then transfer securely to the Digital Mailbox managed by the Scottish Government. These messages are then made available by the Scottish Government to view within MyCare.scot. But the process of creating these messages only occurs after a user has signed into MyCare.scot for the first time.
Please note – the Digital Communications functionality is not currently available in the Mobile App, but is available through the Web App version. Any appointments details will still be available to view in the appointments section of the Mobile App including the appointment letter.
Other Sharing
The data shared by MyCare.scot is:
- MyCare.scot uses items called ‘tokens’ to perform its functions. These tokens are small parcels of information held by the app only when a user signs in and uses the service and then deleted. These tokens are used when MyCare.scot requests information from other services, by sharing specific details about that user to ensure the correct information is provided in the response by the other service. This will usually be an individual’s Community Health Index (CHI) number, which is a unique number used to identify an individual in their health and care records. Details from these tokens are shared with any of the organisations who are providing data that is then shown in MyCare.scot. As of June 2026, those are Public Services Delivery Scotland & Scottish Government.
- If you read an unread message in the messages section of MyCare.scot, a signal will be sent to the Digital Mailbox to note the message has been read.
- For website/mobile app analytics, the IP address of a user’s device is shared with the contracted analytics provider, along with details such as browser and device type used. This information is then anonymised and not used to track individual users.
- Mobile App Only – the IP address of the device and appointment reference number (where relevant) is shared with the contracted service provider for the purposes of crash analytics to understand if the app isn’t working and why that might be the case
- Mobile App Only – the IP address of the device and other non-personal data is sent to the contracted service provider for the purposes of app attestation, which is a process that checks that the app is genuine and has not been tampered with and the device being used is secure
Data we Process about your use of MyCare.scot
How you use MyCare.scot
The support services provided by PSD Scotland stores data about your activities when you are logged in and using MyCare.scot. This is often referred to as audit data and will include the actions taken and the related technical details and will be captured against your ScotAccount ID and CHI number. PSD Scotland are acting as a Processor to the Health Board for this data, and it will be held for three years.
Reporting and Analytics
PSD Scotland will also provide reporting and analytics services to Health Boards. This will be used to understand things like how many people have signed up to use MyCare.scot, the number of successful CHI matches, numbers of calls to the National Contact Centre and the types of calls or issues people are having. ScotAccount will also provide access to figures for reporting purposes. These activities will be undertaken to understand if the service is working, to highlight any areas where users are having issues and improvements can be made, and also to inform Health Boards how the service is being used which may inform future work to improve or expand MyCare.scot services.
Website and Mobile App Analytics
Plausible Analytics have been contracted to provide intelligence around how MyCare.scot is being used. When users click or select any pages within MyCare.scot, an event about this page is created and these events are sent securely to Plausible Analytics. These events include details of the device including IP address, device type and browser/app details. The information is then anonymised and cannot be traced back to individuals. The analytics from this work will provide us an understanding of which pages of MyCare.scot are being used and to identify any patterns or trends in usage.
Transferring data abroad & Automated Decision-Making
MyCare.scot and the healthcare systems it interacts with do not transfer data relating to your healthcare outside of the UK as part of this work.
The Digital Mailbox which is managed by the Scottish Government uses contractors who store data in the UK and European Economic Area, which is covered under the EU-UK Data Adequacy Agreement.
For the virtual waiting room the minimal information of IP address and details about the device are processed by Queue-It in servers within the EEA which is covered by the EU-UK Data Adequacy Agreement. Ordinarily Amazon Web Services Cloudfront route this traffic through UK or EEA locations, however in exceptional circumstances where network capacity is not available this may be routed to locations outside of the UK or EEA. Relevant contractual clauses are in place to ensure that UK GDPR data protection standards are always upheld. This only relates to IP address and device details (operating system, browser version etc.) used while passing through the virtual waiting room, and not for any of your health and care data processed in MyCare.scot.
For website/mobile analytics, we transfer IP addresses to our provider Plausible Analytics whose servers are based in Germany, however Plausible Analytics never store this data.
For crash analytics, we transfer IP address and appointment reference number to our provider based in Germany, which is covered under the EU-UK Data Adequacy Agreement.
Automated decision-making is the process of making a decision by automated means without any human involvement that has a significant effect on individuals. There is no automated decision-making that occurs within MyCare.scot.
Security of your Information
MyCare.scot and the wider Digital Front Door Programme ensure your personal information is only accessible to people with the need and right to see information.
Staff from all the organisations involved have a legal and contractual duty to keep personal information relating to health and social care secure and confidential.
MyCare.scot adheres to the same high standards that are in place for the existing systems providing health and social care services.
For further details on how each organisation involved in the Digital Front Door Programme handles data, please see each organisation’s privacy notice. The following link has a list of all 14 regional Health Boards with a link to their main website which will hold their privacy notice. Often you will find a link to the privacy notice at the bottom of the home page either under “Privacy Notice” or “Data Protection” links.
Organisations – Scotland's Health on the Web
Your Rights
Under the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, you have the following rights:
- The right to be informed - know how and why your data will be collected, processed and stored
- The right of access - request a copy of your personal data
- The right to rectification - correct errors or omissions in your personal data
- The right to erasure – ask us to delete your personal data
- The right to restrict processing - to ask us to restrict our use of your personal data (for example, if you think it's inaccurate and needs to be corrected)
- The right to data portability
- The right to object
- Rights related to automated decision making including profiling
Some of these rights are not absolute and may not apply in all circumstances. Requests to exercise rights are considered on a case-by-case basis.
How to exercise your rights
If you think any of the information shown in MyCare.scot is not correct, then you can contact the National Contact Centre on 0800 030 8014
You can exercise your rights by contacting the Controller of the data used in MyCare.scot. This will be your regional Health Board.
A list of contact details for the Data Protection Officers in Health Boards can be found on NHS Inform:
How the NHS handles your personal health information | NHS inform
For aspects relating to NHS Lanarkshire appointments, contact NHS Lanarkshire's Referral Management Service on the number included in your appointment letter
Right to complain
You also have the right to complain to an organisation if you think it has not handled personal information responsibly and in line with good practice. In the first instance you should contact the relevant Controller who will be your regional Health Board. A link to a list of contact details for the Data Protection Officers in Health Boards can be found in the “How to exercise your rights” section of this notice.
If you are still not satisfied you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:
Assessments and Supporting Documents
Several assessments with regards to the impact on data protection (known as a Data Protection Impact Assessment or DPIA), equality and children’s rights have been undertaken as part of the Digital Front Door Programme. These documents can be found on this page.
User Support
If you are having issues with using MyCare.scot, you can contact the National Contact Centre on 0800 030 8014.