Doctors have warned that plans to pool medical records on to a database and share them with third parties could erode the relationship between them and patients.
The warning came as the Royal College of GPs wrote to NHS Digital urging it to better communicate with the public about the plans and their options for opting out.
Critics have voiced concerns over the NHS Digital plans, which would put the medical histories of more than 55 million patients into a database available to academic and commercial third parties for research and planning purposes.
Privacy campaigners have already spoken out against the proposals, which include sharing anonymised mental and sexual health data, criminal records, and more sensitive information. The records would be scraped from every patient in England registered to a GP clinic by NHS Digital, which runs the country’s healthcare IT systems.
Just ask yourself this question – do you trust the government IT systems to be secure and robust? Do you trust the government not to make a complete clusterfuck of everything it touches? Do you feel that your data will remain anonymised and safe?
If the answer to these questions is “no” then opt out.
You can do it here. Of course there is still a risk, just by putting details into this, but if enough of us do it, they might get the message and will support the message being sent by the Royal College of GPs and privacy campaigners.
Opt out by all means, but you should also opt out of using any medical advances that may be made by researchers using this huge pool of data.
Nope.
I’m paying for this through my taxes. Until I get the option of not paying said taxes and going private I will continue to take what poor service and actual benefit that the NHS does produce, since I have no choice BUT to fund these leftwing health nazis. Why should I have to be subject to further intrusion of privacy to get a return on tax paid?
Quite. The whole enterprise is highly unethical.
Here in New Zealand, the entire medical records of one of the District Health Boards have been hacked by ransomware.This means that no one is able to be treated if they have an ongoing problem as their records are not readily available .There has been talk of having to send cancer patients to Australia to continue treatment. Why medical records are not kept in a secure ring fenced system I dont know but it will be weeks before everything is back to normal.I dont think NHS records will be all that secure either.
Thanks for publishing this; I’m pretty certain that I opted out when it first came up years ago but they’ve probably lost that bit of info so this has to help as I’m pretty certain that it will leak, get left on a train or be hacked. Thanks.
“…Do you trust the government not to make a complete clusterfuck of everything it touches?..
Being now in my eighth decade, all my experience and observation to date leads me to conclude that a complete clusterfuck is par for the course.
many congratulations – the only point i disagree with is the ‘inn due course’ – i think ‘inevitable’ might have been more appropriate
Thanks for including the link to opt out – I couldn’t find it on the site.