The Citizens Council provides NICE with a public perspective on overarching moral and ethical issues that NICE should take into account when producing guidance. Made up of members of the public, broadly representative of the adult UK population, the Council operates through a “citizens’ jury” style meeting, to explore and respond to a question set by NICE. At its meeting in November 2015, the Citizens Council was asked:” What ethical and practical issues need to be considered in the use of anonymised information derived from personal care records as part of the evaluation of treatments and the delivery of care?” This question was asked to explore the use of information from care records as part of the evaluation and research of new treatments and approaches to delivering care. This is an important topic of direct relevance to producing guidance in circumstances where research from more traditional sources, such as randomised controlled trials, is limited or absent, such as for new treatments to treat rare conditions, and to provide information on ‘real world’ populations. The Council explored the question by thinking about the benefits and concerns in the collection and use of anonymised personal data in everyday situations and then in health and social care, before identifying ethical issues from the perspective of the care user/service user, the care provider, the research organisation and society as a whole. They considered whether there are circumstances when access to interventions being researched in care should be limited to patients consenting to share their data and finally weighed up how sharing personal care data for health and social care research fitted within the values of a social duty for the greater good and an individual’s right to privacy. At the end of the meeting just over half of the members of the Council said they would have no concerns about NICE using anonymised data derived from personal care records. The remainder had concerns about the use of such data, including its use by NICE. These concerns related to use of data from personal care records generally, regardless of the organisation using it for research. They centred on transparency about how data is used and how it might be used in the future; the potential for data to be sold on to other organisations and used for profit and for purposes other than research; ensuring research is conducted according to good scientific practice and data is used to benefit society; and data security. To ensure people fully understand use of data from personal care records for research the Council suggested that NICE should hold open days and provide information resources designed to ensure people understand what data is being used for, precisely how it will be used and providing reassurance that personal care data will not be passed on or sold to other organisations. Consent procedures should be audited and an ombudsman should oversee the governance of the use of personal care information for research. The Council recommended that appropriate systems and good working practices should be put in place to ensure a consistent approach to research planning, data capture and analysis.