Sharing patient data is something to be celebrated, not feared
In her later years, my mother never went anywhere without her handbag. It contained a home-made folder in which she’d listed all her ailments, and the copious numbers of pills she was taking. Her fear was not of people finding out she was a depressive diabetic with heart problems. It was that no one would know, if she was admitted to hospital in the middle of the night, because the NHS is so hopeless at joining up information.
This weekend, privacy campaigners are raging that NHS England has asked all hospital trusts to upload patient information on to what will become a central database. This has been described as a “land grab” by software companies which “throws up huge doubts” over the security of sensitive patient data, according to the Conservative MP David Davis. A group of activists and doctors are planning to sue the government to reveal more details. But the hysteria is misplaced: this is a long overdue attempt to give us all a version of my mother’s folder.
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Camilla Cavendish
