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| An electronic medical record example (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The project is being driven by NHS England, the new super quango, after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt made it clear he wanted a data revolution in the Health Service.
Mr Hunt argues that sharing GP records with universities and private companies will provide a valuable tool for medical research, monitoring flu outbreaks and screening for common diseases. The estimated charge for a persons medical records will be set at £1
The records – held for every person registered with a GP – will contain details of medical conditions, as well as ‘identifiable’ information including a patient’s NHS number, postcode and date of birth. GPs are NOT repeat NOT required to inform patients of this happening and until recently patients had no right to object to their files being used in this way but now they can opt out of the sharing of data by informing their GPs. (Maybe the process should have been to "opt in" rather than out) Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: ‘The more people who have access to sensitive data, the greater the risk that it will not be protected properly. We’ve seen that on umpteen occasions in the past.
‘And when there’s a financial element involved, it introduces all sorts of incentives that are not necessarily about protecting privacy.’ Phil Booth, of campaign group medConfidential, said: ‘They are presenting this as some anodyne thing that’s only going to be used for health research. But this is a massive re-engineering of how everybody’s medical records are going to be used. It is an unprecedented threat to our medical confidentiality.’ The prime minister said it was "simply a waste to have a health service like the NHS and not to use (sell) the medical data it generated ". "Let me be clear" ( oh those words,let me be clear or to the best of my knowledge) " this does not threaten privacy, it does'nt mean anyone can look at your health records, but it does mean using anonymous data ( joke surely) to make new medical breakthroughs". " The end result will be that every willing patient is a research patient ( guinea pig ) and every time you use the NHS you are playing a part in the fight against disease at home and around the world" Just for the record mr prime minister you can count me out.
