England’s NHS plans to share patient records with third parties
55m patients have until June 23 to opt out of having their health data scraped into a new database
https://www.ft.com/content/9fee812f-6975-49ce-915c-aeb25d3dd748
England’s NHS is preparing to scrape the medical histories of 55m patients, including sensitive information regarding mental and sexual health, criminal records and the abuse of adults and children, into a database it will share with third parties.
The data collection project, which is the first of its kind, has caused an uproar among privacy campaigners, who say it is “legally problematic”, especially as patients only have a few weeks to opt out of the plan.
NHS Digital, which runs the health service’s IT systems, confirmed the plan to pool together medical records from every patient in England who is registered with a GP clinic into a single lake that will be available to academic and commercial third parties for research and planning purposes.
55m patients have until June 23 to opt out of having their health data scraped into a new database
https://www.ft.com/content/9fee812f-6975-49ce-915c-aeb25d3dd748
England’s NHS is preparing to scrape the medical histories of 55m patients, including sensitive information regarding mental and sexual health, criminal records and the abuse of adults and children, into a database it will share with third parties.
The data collection project, which is the first of its kind, has caused an uproar among privacy campaigners, who say it is “legally problematic”, especially as patients only have a few weeks to opt out of the plan.
NHS Digital, which runs the health service’s IT systems, confirmed the plan to pool together medical records from every patient in England who is registered with a GP clinic into a single lake that will be available to academic and commercial third parties for research and planning purposes.