On Monday, 21 October 2024, Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced plans to modernise the NHS by transitioning to a digital system for all patient records. The project will focus on creating a unified patient record accessible through the NHS App, consolidating health information, including test results and medical letters. The new approach aims to give patients more power to manage their medical histories, eliminating the need to repeatedly provide information during appointments. The transition to digital records will also ensure that healthcare staff have a comprehensive view of patient medical records, reducing the need to repeat medical tests and minimising medication errors. Government figures project that such streamlined access to patient data could conserve approximately 140,000 hours of NHS staff time annually, allowing more direct interaction between healthcare providers and patients, potentially saving lives.
The government confirmed that news laws, set to be introduced on Wednesday, will facilitate sharing of health records across all NHS trusts, GP surgeries, and ambulance services in England.
In a statement responding to the news, a spokesperson for the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said: "We stand ready to support the Government's ambition to make the NHS fit for the future, including the move to a more digital approach. Data protection law can help organisations to share personal information responsibly, enabling innovation while protecting people's data. People need to trust that their medical information is in safe hands, and organisations must be clear and transparent with people about how this information will be used. Health and care records are highly sensitive information, so we expect data protection to be prioritised and built into all new initiatives from the start. We will be monitoring the proposals closely and will engage with Government and NHS England as their plans develop."
Commenting on an article in The Guardian, Sam Smith, a spokesperson for patient privacy campaign group medConfidential, said the plans would create a vulnerable database that could then be shared with pharmaceutical companies. Smith said: "Wes Streeting is planning a ’big brother’ database. Your identifiable medical history and all your medical notes will no longer be looked after by doctors and will be controlled by politicians who will decide who they get sold to – which will inevitably be anyone who’ll pay for them.
"The proposals are a gift to stalkers and creeps who misuse NHS systems to find out the most basic private details that people only tell their doctors, and the government shows no sign of taking the most basic steps to prevent stalkers and creeps getting access.
"Your entire medical history will be readable by anyone with access. And these new mega datastores would be at ever-present risk of hacking."
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