Support and guidance

This section will help you find what you want on our website, and also contains contact information if you need more assistance.

If you are looking for ...

Products listed by subject area, use our topic pages:

These topics are also available at the bottom of every page in the website. 

Data in one of our publications or indicators:

• Use the Find data area to search or browse our catalogue of official statistics and reports.
• Use our A-Z listing of publication titles.
• Check the Publications Calendar, which lists both past and future publications by release date.
• Search the Indicator Portal for our 1,900+ indicators.

Not sure about the difference between an official statistic and an indicator? See the list of services we offer..

The data sets and collections we maintain:

• See the Collecting data section, or
• Use the Product A-Z at the bottom of every page to link directly to our product pages.

Access to data:

• Find out about the data we release as Open Data.
• See our Data Access Request Service, which provides extracts from a range of individual and linked data sets, and can link individual sets of data in a secure environment.
• If you are a health or social care organisation, read the latest information on . 

Information about how we protect patient data:

• See our section on How we look after information. 
• Find out about the various rules governing the use and sharing of confidential information in the .
• Visit our Information Governance section.

A system or tool that we provide or support:

• See our IT infrastructure topic page for information about NHS Mail, Choose and Book, NHS Number, and other infrastructure systems.
• See our Tools page for links to tools that help you compare and manipulate data.
• See the Systems section for an alphabetical listing of all systems and tools.

How to request information:

The Health and Social Care Act (2012) describes how the Secretary of State and NHS England might issue Directions to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and how any other body may make requests.

• To read about our process and procedure for handling various types of request, please see our guide.
• To make a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request or request personal data under the Data Protection Act (DPA), see our Policies and procedures.
• For any other information, please email our Contact Centre.

Benefits case studies

For information on how stakeholders have used some of our publications and what outcomes and benefits they've contributed to through these uses, please see the benefits case studies page