NHS Spine: Are Your Medical Records Safe?Feb 21, 07:12 PM

As some of you may be aware, part of the governments plans for developing the NHS involves uploading your medical records to a central database. The goverment claims that this will be a secure processs which will have wothwhile benefits for patient care. Many health and IT professionals are concerned that this move represents a considerable risk to the security of your private data for little medical benefit. 

Whilst it is important for us to present you with an unbiased appraisal of the governments plans to upload your records to the NHS spine, we find it very hard to find any reasons to recommend the governments plans.  There is some excellent information on the website I have quoted from below and on The Big Opt Out. 

From  http://www.ymcentre.freeserve.co.uk/optout/

In January 2008 a poll by the British Medical Association revealed that nine out of ten doctors have no confidence in this government's ability to safeguard patients' data online or felt that they were in a position to assure patients that their data would be safe...

The unbelievable data protection breaches that were realised towards the end of 2007, including the loss of 25 million child benefit records and 15,000 pension policy records by Revenue and Customs, personal financial details of 40,000 housing benefit claimants by the Department of Work and Pensions, personal details of 6,000 people and details of 3,000,000 candidates for the driving theory test by the DVLA simply illustrate the very real dangers of choosing to upload personal data to huge centralised government databases.

The government has produced the following information about the spine:

http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/spine 

You should make sure you have read about the potential benefits of the NHS spine before making a decision regarding  your own records.

The practice has made a decision not to upload any records without your explicit consent, so if you do nothing, your records will not be uploaded.

We will be posting more about this in the waiting room and on this site. There will be information leaflets available in surgery soon. 

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