The Department of Health last year ran a consultation into who should have access to patients’ medical data. More precisely, they wanted to know about ‘additional uses’ of patient records, apart from the patients’ medical care, and about the different systems which should be in place for ‘anonymised’ and ‘identifiable’ records. They had public meetings [...]

Two stories that have come to our attention this week highlight a tricky aspect of electronic patient records which has been rather pushed to the sidelines.
Herefordshire is celebrating becoming the first county to integrate their NHS and council IT system in a great step forward for more joined-up public services.
Hereford’s ICT director Zack Pandor said:
If [...]

Here’s a fun game for these rainy afternoons. Go to google and search for ‘NHS patient records lost.’
The results are impressive – the list of scandals gives the impression of data loss of an almost serial nature. A couple of thousand patient records lost on a stolen laptop here, another 2,500 left on a laptop [...]

Some research by Carnegie Mellon University on our attitudes to privacy could lead to some interesting conclusions for Who Sees What?
You might be forgiven for assuming that when companies reassure you about their privacy policy it is, well, reassuring. Not so, says Carnegie Mellon University. A series of clever tests have shown that we [...]

True to his name, the blogger The Yorkshire Ranter has launched a fierce (and in places rather convincing) attack on  Tory plans to hand over the NHS IT plans to Google or Microsoft. His cynicism stems from the rather philosophical point that ‘the purpose of a system is what it does.’
Unlike the NHS, nobody pretends [...]

Over at the Guardian’s Smarthealthcare, details of a new announcement by David Cameron may prove concerning for privacy advocates. Against a background of significant criticism of the NHS IT programme by the opposition, the Tory leader has suggested a different approach to the management of our healthcare data. His inspiration is Google Health and Microsoft [...]

There’s been a couple of interesting stories on electronic patient records doing the rounds this week which highlight some of their potential – and some of their risks.
The Charm Project, which is beiing run by a coalition of British universities, will be using technology to help people control the amount of exercise they do. [...]