What is the scheme?
The Information Standard is a new certification scheme for health and social care information producers. Those organisations that meet the criteria of The Information Standard will then be entitled to place a quality mark on their information materials so people searching for health and social care information can easily identify it as coming from a reliable, trustworthy source.
The Information Standard looks at processes and, in that respect, is similar to schemes such as ‘Fair Trade’. The organisation’s process for developing information will be assessed rather than individual pieces of information. The assessment will evaluate elements like the organisation’s processes for making sure information produced is consistent with latest clinical evidence or their process for involving information users.
The development of the scheme has considered the experience of other schemes which have looked at individual pieces of information. This process based approach has had wide support from stakeholders and was felt to be the best and most practical way of establishing a scheme with a long life. The approach also builds on lessons from other schemes which have looked at individual pieces of information.
The scheme is now launched following a period of testing which has helped to develop the detailed operational processes for the scheme.
What does the scheme hope to achieve?
The Information Standard has been developed to support people in using health and social care information and, in doing so, help people to make confident, informed decisions about their health and social care. The Information Standard mark can help people make these decisions with confidence because it offers reassurance that health and social care information carrying the mark is from a reliable source.
The Information Standard can be part of helping people to:
- understand their health and care
- make effective decisions for themselves and their families
- help with uncertainty as to what information they should trust
Research has found that information available to people varies greatly in terms of quality, accessibility and availability. Information producers can use The Information Standard to improve the way in which they develop their information leading to an overall improvement in the quality of information available to people.
How will the scheme operate?
This scheme is designed to run independently. A range of organisations including charities, private companies public sector bodies produce health and social care information. In order to avoid any potential conflicts of interest if, say the scheme were managed by an NHS body, The Information Standard is operated by an independent organisation whose role is simply to apply The Information Standard in an impartial way.
Capita were appointed to operate the scheme in April 2009. Their responsibilities in this role include; promoting the scheme, providing support to potential members and authorising a number of certification bodies to assess scheme applicants and offer certification against the standard. These Certification Bodies are specialists in carrying out such evaluations against standards. The certification bodies themselves will be accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) to confirm that they are competent to provide a certification service for this scheme.
The Information Standard quality mark
Certified information producers will display this quality mark.
The mark has been extensively tested with the general public, health and social care professionals. It was chosen because feedback from these groups indicated that the quality mark conveyed the sense of authority they wanted and would provide assurance when searching for reliable information. The mark refers to the source of the information, rather than the information itself.
Certified members will also be able to use other versions of the mark with additional explanatory text.
Why do we need this?
There have been a number of calls for such a scheme over recent years including by the Consumers Association in 2003.
DH commissioned specific research when deciding on the feasibility of the scheme and we found:
- 77 per cent of people had looked up some form of health or social care information in the previous 12 months
- 75 per cent found it hard to work out what information was trustworthy or not
- 88 per cent felt that the proposed certification scheme was a good idea
- 87 per cent claimed it would make them trust the information more
- 78 per cent stated that they would only use or show a preference for information from organisations certified by the scheme.
Further information
For more information please email
informationstandard@capita.co.uk