Incisive-View

Another great and pressing article from MPACUK:

Yet Another Database to Monitor You!
Tuesday, 09 January 2007

Union JackMany of you by now may be aware of government plans to store our medical records in to a national database, dubbed NHS SPINE, this is to comprise of the records of 50 million patients in the UK. These plans are currently being sold to us as a means for the NHS to provide a better service to its patients. As a computer scientist, I do not doubt the advantages of having all this information stored in this form – it is true that databases offer us almost limitless flexibility and efficiency over recording information in a paper format; the most obvious of benefits being that the data can be accessible from anywhere: an emergency visit to the hospital, or registering to a new GP – your data would be available to the medical staff instantly allowing them to provide the most appropriate form of treatment.

That said; the government is prepared to wholly abuse the medical information stored in these databases. In an era where we are to see compulsory ID cards to be introduced, a time where our movements by tube and car are logged, where our activities on the internet are subject to scrutiny, this database seems to be one of the long line of computer systems the government is utilising in order to take away our privacy.

Already there have been indications that information stored on these databases will be accessible to the government, police, security services and potentially other third parties (employers, insurance firms etc) without our knowledge or consent.

As a result, many Civil liberty organisations and critics are calling this "data rape" and are urging Britons to boycott it. Details of mental illnesses, pregnancy, HIV status or drug-taking may also be included, and there are no laws to prevent DNA profiles being added. Plans are also in place to use clever data mining techniques with these records to try and predict things such as which children are likely to commit crimes etc. One worry is that patients will be unwilling to confide in their doctors, and doctors may well be unwilling to record information given in confidence. The outcome of a recent poll by the Guardian newspaper found that four out of five doctors thought the confidentiality of their patients' records would be at risks - if the doctors are worried about this, we certainly should be!

The system is being introduced through an underhand "implied consent" model (used more and more by centralised bureaucracies), rather than the explicit, informed, individual consent which the principles of data protection require, something the British Medical Association has already expressed reservations about.

There has also been a lot of concern aired regarding the security of this information - people's medical secrets will be vulnerable to computer hackers and security breaches. Ministers are promising state-of-the-art technology to prevent unauthorised access, but anyone who has any knowledge of encryption and security technology is fully aware that no method of security is totally failsafe (if the U.S defence and NASA systems get hacked into, what hope is there for the NHS database?) .

What can be done?

Before this data is transferred across to the live system, individuals can opt out of it by writing a letter to their GP (http://www.nhsconfidentiality.org/optoutletter ) but once this information is uploaded, it will be very difficult to reverse the process - matter of fact; the only way to have it taken off is if you can show "substantial mental distress"… and that is surely going to be a difficult task.