from today’s Guardian
Millions of personal medical records are to be uploaded regardless of patients’ wishes to a central national database from where information can be made available to police and security services, the Guardian has learned.”
more scary stuff about who has access (250,000 people so far), etc., in the article.
write to your doctor, and to the Secretary of State for Health (Ms Spewitt, that is), with the wording in this piece (again from the Grauniad.
I shall be penning word-processing my letter today.
I’m not that mithered about this one, my medical record stops around 1981 I think. 😉
I’d rather have my records on the spine than on paper that goes missing. Can be careleslly left open for the next patient to read. Is disperate, ie. your GP had one set of notes, hospital another another hospital another different set. Clinical history cant be quickly accessed if I end up in A&E unconcious. I expect the police can ask for access to the hard copies anyway if they have a need/warrant.
I agree the security still isn’t fully sorted, but it’s probably no worse than the paper records or the electronic systems most GP’s already use. To be honest in some ways the security issue is going to be the downfall of the service. For example, I heard this yesterday. We’re putting in a picture archiving system here as part of the bigger connecting for health project. If there’s a fault with one of the workstations say displaying images and GE have to remotely diagnose the problem. Because they may be able to see a patients scan/xray/name a radiologist will have to be sat at the workstation when they connect in to make sure nothing sensitive is viewed. This will of course mean that rather than being a doctor and diagnosing patients they’ll be stuck there until the problem is resolved all because of patient confidentiality. I know its not quite the same, but I’m sure your bank manager hasnt got to be there when the technicians are fixing the bank computers with all your private financial information on.
Yes, people should be allowed to opt out. However they will have to accept that their level of care could be affected.
Needing to know
It’s very simple :
Some of us, like ramtops believe it should be strictly need to know, and those who do need to know should be authenticated, and nobody else can have access.
The government believe that it should be available to anybody expressing an interest, be it commercial pharmacutical research (who should be provided with nicely anonoymised reports anyway), police, MI5 (because patient records would be *so* helpful to national security, not), Government ministers (who will happen to turn a blind eye to leaks, as with Abu Hamza, when it helps them vilify this weeks bogeyman), and pretty much anybody who asks.
Given that Connecting for health is a shambles, they *should* be going for the simplest and therefore easiest to secure subset of functionality, but being NuLabour – instead they want to combine big brother surveilence, giant projects doomed to failure but with a catchy name and spiel that impresses the luddite public, central controls and backroom PPI deals with the usual suspects and ‘services’ giants.
Would you really want a politician to know your sexual history, any past drug use, serious illness, etc. I know those things can and will be used against you after being searched by police in college merely on hearsay that I had taken drugs in the past, this information could be used for harrasment or as ’cause for suspicion’ should somebody want to stop you at a march or protest – even if they release you uncharged afterwoods, that’s a serious abuse and it’s pretty inevitable looking at how police and government currently handle dissent
Re: Needing to know
“The government believe that it should be available to anybody expressing an interest, be it commercial pharmacutical research (who should be provided with nicely anonoymised reports anyway)”
If your records are to be used for research you have to give consent. No drugs company or evern NHS doctor can use your medical records for research without first getting consent. I’ve recently started a very un sensitive research study and it’s taken a year to get all the paperwork and funding in place including a very lengthy ethical process. This has to be done be it new research or research based on past notes. I think now even for audit you have to appy for ethical approval.
Id rather they can look at historical data in a large database and find problems with drugs/treatmens more quickly.
Re: Needing to know
That’s just it – they want to change it so that anybody can see your data, without court orders or paperwork because they’ve either paid a fee or can shout ‘terrorism!’.
Tbh, I don’t have an issue with it – rather that than (as last week) being stuck in a waiting room for two hours until paper notes could be physically brought from one department to another via the wrong place entirely.
Blimey!
As far as I can tell, my entire medical history is a big packet of loose bits of paper held together with treasury tags, rubber bands and paper clips, and each time I go it gets thicker and we still can’t find certain bits of paper (which means I have to go through it all again with each new locum and they never fully believe me).
I’d be happier if I thought my medical history was going to be available to doctors and hospitals … but it’s *not* (certainly not in my experience) so why should the police and security have access but my local accident and emergency doesn’t?
med records
Given the stats on estimated damage due to lack of access to records or delayed access, I have to say I am fine with it. I’d far rather doctors were able to get access to the data if I’m in an accident in Wales, than not.
Where practical I believe there is pseudonymisation, but there are cost implications for every extra layer of security.