The Guardian reports that GPs are expressing grave doubts about access to the "Spine" - an electronic warehouse being built to store information on about 50 million patients. More than 60% of family doctors said they feared records would be vulnerable to hackers and unauthorised access by public officials from outside the NHS and social care.Photo left: Hawthorn berries on roadside in Bread Street, Ruscombe
Ministers have committed a large slice of the NHS's £12bn IT upgrade to developing the Spine. They acted on the assumption that doctors would provide the information without asking their patients' permission first. The new system has been constructed to upload information from GPs' computer systems automatically, without giving patients a say. But the poll found 51% of GPs are unwilling to allow this uploading without getting each patient's specific consent. Only 13% say they are willing to proceed without consent and the rest are unsure or lack enough information to comment.
I have to say I am not at all happy about this - only a few days ago I did a blog about concerns re fingerprint scanning in pubs. It seems at every turn information about ourselves is being shared with others. Private medical records should be just that - private. I will be asking my GP not to upload records to the government's 'Spine' database system - at the very least until concerns about future access to files, security issues and more are resolved.
Will the growing number of private companies operating in the health fields also be given access in the future? And what if sensitive information was leaked about individuals health records? Who else will have access? Even the purpose is somewhat vague - with the Government pressurising people to sign up or face the possibilities of poorer healthcare. I applaud the majority of GPs who still want to safeguard our privacy.
Read full Guardian article here.
