It is the key to the identification of patients, especially in delivering safe care across provider organisations, and is required in all new software deployed within these National Health Services (NHS).
[1] "New NHS numbers" were allocated to every newborn from July 1995,[2] generally introduced in 1996, and became mandatory on 1 April 1997.
It comes from a record being made on the Personal Demographics Service, a national patient database.
[4] NHS Numbers are re-issued if a patient is adopted or undergoes gender re-assignment.
The current system uses a ten-digit number in '3 3 4' format with the final digit being an error-detecting checksum.