The NHS has delayed a patient data sharing scheme for six months after the programme faced criticism from GPs and patient groups.

The move to suspend the introduction of the programme until autumn comes after the NHS acknowledged that there was a lack of public confidence in the data sharing scheme.

The delay is designed to give patients further time to access the opt-out clauses and increase overall understanding of the scheme, with polls showing that two-thirds of England’s 26 million households had not seen leafleting on the scheme.

Chair of the British Medical Association's general practitioner's committee, Chaand Nagpaul, said: "While the BMA is supportive of using anonymised data to plan and improve the quality of NHS care for patients, this must only be done with the support and consent of the public, and it is only right that they fully understand what the proposals mean to them and what their rights are if they do not wish their data to be extracted."

Text messages used to transform NHS care

NHS moves forward with GP data collection