The one record that follows your family through every provider.
A midwife, a GP, a hospital, a school, a care home, specialists. Each keeps its own notes. Often the only person present at all of them is you.
Four moments where the record matters most
From pregnancy through childhood
Your own health in pregnancy, then your child's, across every appointment until they leave home. The red book records results. Nothing records what was said.
A child with complex needs
Therapists, psychologists, paediatricians and school, each seeing one part, while parents hold it all together.
When Dad needs care
The first worrying appointment, then the GP, the memory clinic, the care assessment and the pharmacist, while you manage your own family too.
After someone has gone
A lifetime of what someone said, decided and wanted, kept for the people they chose, and still able to answer their questions.
And afterwards
When someone dies, what they said, decided and wanted usually goes with them, or sits on devices nobody can open. Forthold for families is being designed so that a record can pass on, and keep answering the questions a family is left with.
What did Dad want done with the cottage?
He said he wanted it kept in the family and shared between you and Ellie, and that his solicitor has the letter about it.
How we are designing it
None of this is available yet. These are the principles it is being built to.
Their decision, made in life
Whether anyone may ask about their record after they have gone, and who, is decided by the person whose record it is. Without that decision, nothing passes on.
It answers, it never impersonates
It answers questions about what they said and wanted, and shows where every answer came from. It never speaks as them.
Other people stay protected
A record includes other people's words. What passes on respects what those people agreed to.
The family can stop it
Whoever inherits the record can switch the agent off at any time.
What we are working through first
We would rather tell you plainly than launch something that is not ready.
Consent
Appointments involve clinicians and other professionals, and they need to agree to be recorded too.
A child's own record
When, and how, the record passes to your child, is a question we want a clear answer to before we start.
Protection
Health information about people who cannot consent for themselves needs the highest standard of care we can give.
What happens afterwards
How a record passes on, who may ask about it, and how the people in it are protected all need clear answers, and legal advice, before we offer it.