About Me information is the most important details that a person wants to share with professionals in health and social care. This information might include how best to communicate with the person, how to help them feel at ease or details about how they like to take their medication. This standard outlines how About Me information should be documented and shared in health and care records.

Using About Me information has been shown to achieve huge benefits for people including supporting them through hospital appointments or other care which might not have been possible or resulted in adverse outcomes without understanding key ways to work with the person.

The standard is structured to help both professionals find the information about the person quickly and help people to structure the information they wish to share.

Watch Shane’s moving story to find out how important the right information is for good care and how it can keep people well and out of hospital.

‘About Me’ is for any person (or their carer/guardian where the person doesn’t have capacity) to share the things that are most important to them with the professionals and carers providing their care. It is intended to be generic and apply to everyone, from those who have complex care and support needs to those who rarely require care and/or support. It is not intended for repeating information which should be in a person’s record.

• UK wide and applies to adults and children.
• A standard for sharing information that the person (or somebody acting on their behalf) considers important about themselves to enable the best, personalised care and support to be provided.
• Captures an individual’s needs, preferences, and strengths to support person-centred care and self-management.
• Provides a holistic view, including what individuals enjoy and can do daily, beyond immediate care needs.
• Organised into sections to help individuals share relevant details and caregivers find key information easily.
• Applicable to everyone, from those with complex needs to those requiring minimal support.

• It does not determine an individual’s right to access social care or health services.
• It is not a person-held record and does not include clinician-recorded details like medications, conditions or reasonable adjustments.
• It is not a care or support plan but sits alongside these in a care record.
• It is not a go-to section for legal information such as Power of Attorney or Next of Kin.
• It does not prescribe what must be included – individuals choose the information they wish to share.
• It does not define who can view it; this is decided locally based on legal and information governance frameworks.
• It does not specify how it should be presented, recorded, or managed across different systems.

The standard has 7 sections which help to provide an overall structure with setting out the information and prioritising the most important information first. Only relevant sections need to be completed and keeping it prioritised and concise is important for busy professionals reading it. The 7 sections are:

• 1. What is most important to me
• 2. People who are important to me
• 3. How I communicate and how to communicate with me
• 4. My wellness
• 5. Please do and please do not
• 6. How and when to support me
• 7. Also worth knowing about me

It can be completed with just text, or with videos/multimedia files and has implementation guidance for both users and those developing systems.

It should be owned by the person, who can update it as and when required. Ideally, it will be shared via a link so professionals access the master version, not old versions copied into local systems.