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Monday 20 January 2014

NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms !

Today in The Guardian
Drug and insurance companies will from later this year be able to buy information on patients – including mental health conditions and diseases such as cancer, as well as smoking and drinking habits – once a single English database of medical data has been created.
Harvested from GP and hospital records, medical data covering the entire population will be uploaded to the repository controlled by a new arms-length NHS information centre, starting in March. Never before has the entire medical history of the nation been digitised and stored in one place.
Advocates say that sharing data will make medical advances easier and ultimately save lives because it will allow researchers to investigate drug side effects or the performance of hospital surgical units by tracking the impact on patients.
But privacy experts warn there will be no way for the public to work out who has their medical records or to what use their data will be put. The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.
More on this story here.
Eddie

Post edit to include comment on post. Opt out now before it is too late.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post

 "NHS patient data to be made available for sale to ...": 

Information on how to opt out: http://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/

38 degrees petition: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/prevent-the-sale-of-nhs-patient-records-to-drug-and-insurance-companies-1

Further information on care.data: http://www.care-data.info/

Epetitions (official govt site) petition here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/53994

We do not want a situation in the future where someone pays a higher rate for a mortgage due to their mother dying of cancer. I would strongly urge people to opt out and sign these petitions. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Information on how to opt out: http://medconfidential.org/how-to-opt-out/

38 degrees petition: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/prevent-the-sale-of-nhs-patient-records-to-drug-and-insurance-companies-1

Further information on care.data: http://www.care-data.info/

Epetitions (official govt site) petition here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/53994

We do not want a situation in the future where someone pays a higher rate for a mortgage due to their mother dying of cancer. I would strongly urge people to opt out and sign these petitions.

Anonymous said...

I don't think that NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender are enough on their own to constitute 'personal data'. If I had that information in relation to you I wouldn't be able to contact you.

The use of that information isn't the individual record but the data trends that it shows.

I think that provided proper data protection principles are followed (which by the way are enshrined in the law) then this is a good thing.

Best

Dillinger

Anonymous said...

Good data protection? Look at what goes on. If phones can be hacked, computer records hacked, those that want to will find a way. The very slippery slope is getting steeper and more slippery as each day passes.

Roy

Lowcarb team member said...

I agree 100% with Roy. Our phones are tapped our emails are read and when did big pharma stick to the law ?

Not so long ago the government lost two cd's with every families family allowance details, they were never found !

Who has them ? When info goes on a computer it can be hacked. Even the Pentagon, NSA and FBI computers have been hacked.Even the German Chancellors phone has been hacked. No one is safe from hackers and crooks.

Eddie

Galina L. said...

It is how it is - privacy doesn't exist any longer. I insisted my doctor made my diet to be the part of my medical history. My purpose is attracting attention to the importance of a diet for any aspect of health. It is even more important than exercise, but gets ignored.