Terms and definitions
The first edition grouped its terms into four families: organisations, people and roles; key properties and processes; health information and technology; and risk management. The draft's own definitions are not public.
What the public record carries
Not stated in the public record beyond four short headings. The first edition's contents group the terms as roles and organisations, properties and processes, information and technology, and risk. The terms inside those groups, and any change the draft makes to them, have to be read from the published text. This page does not guess them.
Basis. The public preview of the first edition carries the contents, which name four term families, and the introduction. The definitions themselves are not reproduced here and the draft's definitions are not public.
Why it matters in a health estate
Definitions are the contract inside a standard. Two teams can both say they manage security and mean different things: a property of the system, a process, a control set or an assurance activity. The same is true of safety and effectiveness. When a revision moves a definition, every procedure that used the old sense is now ambiguous, and the ambiguity surfaces at the worst moment, in a review of an incident or a supplier.
What to do now
Build a definitions sheet for the programme and cite the clause for each term. Mark the terms that come from the standard and the terms the organisation defines for itself. When the draft publishes, diff the sheet against the new Clause 3 and record every change of sense, not only every change of wording.
The evidence a reviewer will ask for
| Evidence | What it is |
|---|---|
| Definitions sheet | The terms used in the programme, with the clause reference for each |
| Local terms | Organisation-specific terms marked as local, never presented as the standard's |
| Sense-change log | A dated note for each term whose meaning changed between editions |
| Training note | Where the sheet is taught and who has confirmed they use it |
What a reviewer will ask
A reviewer will take a term from a procedure and ask which definition it uses. If the procedure and the standard disagree, the procedure is the finding.
Common gaps
- A procedure uses security in its ordinary sense while the register uses it as a defined property
- A term is quoted from the first edition after the second edition has changed it
- Local definitions are presented as the standard's definitions
- No one owns the definitions sheet, so each team keeps its own copy
Before the draft publishes
Collect the terms used in the last three incidents or near misses and check each against the sheet. The terms that are missing are the ones to define first.
If the draft changes this row
The draft is edition 2 and 62 pages, one page more than the first edition. Its text and any change summary are not public as at 21 October 2026. This row follows the published first edition's structure, which is what your procedure should name today. The change watch emails you when the record changes or the draft text lands, and the row is re-read then. No one can tell you what moved before that, and this page does not guess.
Related rows
Who this binds. Everyone who writes a requirement, a risk record or a contract in this field, because the definitions decide what the words mean when two parties disagree.