NHS Direct

How we use cookies

The NHS Direct website uses cookies to help us analyse the usage of our website and to help you get the health advice you need. Cookies are a useful tool for websites, as they tell us about user activity. This information is then used to help us make improvements to our website and to the services we offer.

What’s a cookie?

a piece of text information that a website leaves on a person’s computer, tablet, mobile or smart phone (or any other device used to view a website)
it contains information about a user's activity while on a website
they are controlled by your computer, not NHS Direct. If you visit the Tools section in your browser menu, you will find details of your cookies setting

Our health and symptom checkers use cookies

cookies enable our symptom checkers to 'remember' the answers you give about your symptoms and your age, gender and location
the more we know about you and your condition, the more accurate advice we can give
cookies identify your computer and not you, so you can still remain anonymous
our symptoms checkers won't work without cookies. If you don't want to use them, call 111 for a health assessment. Find out more about calling NHS Direct

Your personal information is safe

cookies are controlled by your computer, not NHS Direct
if you provide any personal details within a symptom checker, information is collected and sent straight to the NHS Direct Clinical Assessment System (CAS) database in an encrypted form
if you need a call back from an NHS Direct nurse, only they will see your details

User data helps us to improve our services

we use analytical software to see how users interact with our website
this enables us to make improvements to the services we offer
user data within our symptom checkers helps us to plan ahead for increases in staff levels during busy periods

Get more information about the cookies we use or find out how you can disable cookies. Please be aware that if you disable cookies, you will be unable to use our health and symptom checkers.

You can find more information on Google cookies as well as more detailed cookie information on the allaboutcookies website.