Posted by pamixchris on Saturday, 03 March 2007 18:12:53

dont you want drs to know your medical history if you were to have an accidint away from your home town?

Posted by AlanahP on Saturday, 03 March 2007 18:26:41

To Pam,
you miss the point, if you have an accident away from home, the Drs in A&E; may not have access to your personal records due to the basic size of the population. How many John Smiths are they in UK for example. If an A&E; dept only has your name they cannot possibly accurately access your records.

A much more sensible plan would be to carry your records on a card- but that brings us into the ID card debate.

Posted by DrBlue on Saturday, 03 March 2007 18:53:54

I agree with Dave Gould. Proposed NHS IT system leads to a big loss of confidentiality. Difficult to safely control access and keep track of who does what. NHS staff lose smart cards and log on under someone else's login.

Private Eye's special on NHS IT put it all very clearly this week.

 

Comment edited by DrBlue on Saturday, 03 March 2007 18:54:38

Posted by Graham on Saturday, 03 March 2007 23:42:06

I've already written to my GP expressly refusing permission to upload my details.

If I have a serious medical condition I can carry an SOS Talisman http://www.sos-talisman.com/ or similar product which gives details, but it's only going to be accessible if I'm actually in an accident and unconscious and thus unable to inform medical staff of the situation, as opposed to the NHS "Spine" which will be accessible to virtually anyone.

And it's all very well to for the Government to say that records will be secure and information kept on who accesses details etc, but consider this: someone I know once got a temporary job doing "Revenue Returns" for the Inland Revenue (ie keying in the information of people who had sent back tax forms). He had very basic, low level access which let him do his job and no more.

Within a day of starting the work he'd managed to "shoulder surf" the boss' password, log into his account and had access to *everyone's* tax records, plus the ability to modify or even delete accounts!

So I don't think that the "data security" the Government is promising us will be any such thing.

Posted by DaveGould on Sunday, 04 March 2007 16:31:28

"dont you want drs to know your medical history if you were to have an accidint away from your home town?"

No, I don't. There's nothing in my medical records that would have any relevance to emergency treatment as is the case with 99+% of people. Secondly, do you really think that a surgeon is going to wait 5+ minutes until the computer says it's OK to inject me with a potentially life-saving drug?

If you have any allergies, carry a card in your wallet/purse or wear a medical bracelet.

The BMA don't want this. Most GPs don't want this. The surgeons presumably don't want it either.

Do you believe everything this Govt tells you? Do you still believe there are WMD in Iraq?

I'd actually volunteer to be in an accident if it stopped this Govt from turning my country into an Orwellian police state.

Posted by christinamnr on Sunday, 04 March 2007 22:52:58

To Pam

You're missing the point.

This is not a policy that is aimed at helping patients-the sole purpose of having your medical data uploaded onto a central database is to allow the easy dismantling and selling of GP services to the private sector.

Once GPs have dutifuly uploaded the data that they have worked hard to collect over the years, the government can simply assign patients to private suppliers by giving them access to the spine.

The total dismantling of the NHS will then have started-we're seeing its death throes now.

Centralised data is not required or wanted for medical systems, except by Politicians. Most of the IT world is trying to create disseminated rather than centralised structures to preserve data integrity.

The NHS is the worlds 3rd largest employer. There is no way that your private and personal data can be guarenteed to be protected from all of these employees, who may well be members of your family, your friends, your neighbours.

What if your neighbour, who is a medical secretary, takes a dislike to the boyfriend your daughter brings home? She looks him up, finds out about that episode of gonorrhoea he had treatment for and starts spreading the word...

What if you want to apply for a job in the local NHS Trust? Your potential employers look you up, find out that you've had time off work for stress in the past, and hey presto-job offer withdrawn.

What if your sister, who you don't get on with, manages to find out about the abortion you had aged 16?

Most people who have conditions that will need taking into consideration should they be admitted as an emergency (diabetics, for example or those allergic to anitbiotics) will wear medialert bracelets or something similar. There isn't much else going to matter in the first few hours of emergency treatment.

Your data does not need to go onto a central database. Most doctors are against this-you should be too for the sake of your privacy.

Posted by mjknight0380 on Sunday, 04 March 2007 23:12:11

DaveGould,

This is a difficult one. I am a doctor in a computerised hospital and find when admitting an unconscious patient or an elderly patient
with demetia that being able to access previous clinic letters and blood results and xrays/CT scans and so on is very useful in establishing
a patients background status (i.e. is this a new condition, a progressive condition or have they been like they are for some time)- belive me this
results in much better patient care.

As this system is contained within our hospital there is no information within it that cannot be found within notes I already have access to- access to the system leaves
an audit trail. Letter can be locked (for example psychiatric letters, paediatrics, criminal and so on) or witheld from the system.

However I very much share your concerns regarding this system- it is total fact that computers are not secure. A secretary who pops to the loo, or feels sick, or
chats to her office neighbour- and all of a sudden a terminal with access to the whole nations medical records is potentiall opened and an interested third party can access
everything (with no fear of being tracked by the system).

The reality is that the government wish to use this system to audit and micromanage the health system- and that is that.

My suggestion for this system is that a national programme allowing blood results, ECG's and xrays be made available, and a portal be available wherby one hospital can transfer a
patients set of notes electronically when a formal verified request is made- and that the locations of patients notes be indexed on the system (in a generic manner- e.g. East Sussex Hospitals
covering all clinics so that it is not possible to tell anything about the patient from the indexing).

This government have already proved that they cannot keep information safe (1% of all passports are lost on posting for example). I do not particularly blame them- I feel
that as soon as there is flow of information that people may be interested in then there is intrinsic to that fact insecurities. As little information as possible should be stored in any
form and it should be as immobile as possible to prevent potential abuses- and imagine them- drug companies with budgets in the hundreds of billions would love to hack into such a healthcare
system- not to find out about Mrs Smith of London, but to look at accurate patient demographics and healthcare trends.

So- I would not have an opt in- I would not have an opt out- I would have a system of indexing, with some simple information on it (which would really be of use only to professionals- if you
are a non doctor/nurse I am sure the results Na 129, K 3.9, Ur 6.2, Cr 89 are totally meaningless, yet to me that information is useful), which would allow however the valid transfer of information between
hospitals when formal requests had been made (rather than the current system of taking the notes apart and faxing them over- very time consuming).