Things have been quiet around here this past week. Real life and all that…
Anyway, this caught my eye. The Care.Data roll-out was mishandled, apparently.
The chair of the panel set up to advise the NHS and ministers on the governance of patient information has told the BBC the Care.data programme was mishandled.
Under the scheme, GP records in England will be put on a database and combined with other data to improve care.
Dame Fiona Caldicott, chairwoman of the Independent Information Governance Oversight Panel (IIGOP), told the BBC that “there was too much hurry”.
She said the public information campaigns were not clear enough.
All of this is fair comment. However, it misses the point – the principle was wrong. Any scheme that is opt-out rather than opt-in is unethical and patient records should be treated with the same degree of confidentiality as the priests’ confessional.
Provide people with accurate information and point out the benefits of the scheme and give people the option to opt-in. If it is sound, people will happily do so. Of course, people wouldn’t and quite rightly too as the very concept is repugnant, which is why the charlatans tried to sneak it in under the radar and went for the highly unethical and immoral opt-out model. This time, it bit them on the bum. Not that this will stop the bastards having another go. So, opt-out and do it now.
I heard this harridan interviewed on the radio today and she suggested that the solution to the problem was to provide her organisation with more resources which by my reckoning means more of our hard earned money. A simpler solution would be to sack her and her minions and forget the whole thing.
But still, fair play to them for learning from their mistakes:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-taxpayers-data