Medical records

[Chris W]

It's a couple of years since I did GDPR training but I suspect this 'data harvest' would fall foul of the law and you can bet someone will crowdfund a test case now the 'cat is out of the bag'.

The way I look at it is, organisations can only hold data for which there is an obvious and ongoing need.  Patient records are only created and maintained with the specific purpose of providing care efficiently to that individual.  The Patient's data cannot be used for any other purpose, regardless of the reason, good or bad. 

 

[Nick Jones]

29 minutes ago, Chris W said:

The Patient's data cannot be used for any other purpose, regardless of the reason, good or bad

Well it could be, as I understand it, either if it were fully and irreversibly anonymised (which affects it's value for some purposes) or if the patient had given their specific consent.  The arrogant decision by the government to "assume consent" would seem likely to fall foul of GDPR though.

[thebrookster]

Would be interesting to see how they plan to implement this.

I assume that England is the same as Scotland in that hospital records are already centralised and digitised, the earlier daily covid updates support this assumption.

I don't know how England (Public Health England unless they change name yet) deal with data requests, but up here no private, be that company or charity, concern has access to raw data. They submit a request to Public Health Scotland, who pull the relevant data and run all the statistical analysis on it, and supply back the results. This is what SWMBO was doing before she was moved to the Covid team.

So this makes me suspect the actual risk is fairly low currently, whether the lack of safeguards is deliberate (for future money making options) or due to existing practice/rules already covering I cannot say.

 

[Nick Jones]

6 hours ago, thebrookster said:

I assume that England is the same as Scotland in that hospital records are already centralised and digitised

I'm not sure English hospitals are that joined up...... I'll be moderately impressed if the Scottish ones are tbh. NHS IT has been something of a pigs breakfast for years.  It would be good if they were......  It's one reason why I find this data grab offensive as it appears to be putting potential profit (provided data to third parties for money/favours) before patient care (integrated nationwide system, which doesn't exist and doesn't appear to be what this is for).

[John I]

18 hours ago, RogerH said:

is that change.org kosha.   I have just been on it to sign the petition.

Before that happened I go diverted and they asked for money. Having coughed up a £10'er the petition disappeared and I'm sure I haven't logged into it.

Looks like they are all getting on the bandwagon to fleece me.

 

Roger

Hi Roger, just to put your mind at rest I’ve just had a notification from change.org that you have signed the petition.