This guide contains all the Sex and Current Gender design guidelines (mandatory and recommended) accompanied by example diagrams to illustrate their application. Although offered as a quick reference to already familiar guidance, you may also find this guide useful for exploring areas of the guidance that are new to you.

Remember that this guide is not a replacement for the definitive version which includes further usage examples (showing both correct and incorrect application) and details the rationale behind the guidance.

Purpose of this Guidance

This guidance specifies a user interface for the display and entry of sex and current gender. The UK Government Data Standards Catalogue (GDSC) categorises a person's gender in two ways:

• Person Gender Current, which refers to a person's current gender classification.
  For brevity and clarity, this document uses the term Current Gender for this concept
• Person Gender at Registration, which refers to the record of a person's gender classification at the point of birth registration.
  For brevity and clarity, this document uses the term Sex for this concept

Healthcare professionals and patients may confuse the terms 'Current Gender' and 'Sex', or assume that they are synonymous. Therefore, all clinical applications should display and explain Current Gender and Sex terminology and values in a clear and consistent manner, both on input of the values and subsequent display.

Allowable values for Current Gender and Sex need to be from a predefined, restricted set in order to ensure legal compliance, patient-sensitivity and data interoperability.

This version of the Sex and Current Gender Input and Display guide is based on the full guidance document Design Guidance - Sex and Current Gender Input and Display (v2.0.0.0) - PDF